


This lonely moment of today

by InvertedPhantasmagoria



Category: Diabolik Lovers
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Beating, Blood and Injury, Body Swap, Broken Bones, Brotherly Affection, Burns, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, Disturbing Themes, Domesticated Vampires, Fang Removal, Gen, Hallucinations, Humiliation, Inspired By Tumblr, Mental Breakdown, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Non-Sexual Submission, Obedience, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Imbalance, Psychological Trauma, Public Humiliation, Rape/Non-con Elements, Solitary Confinement, Starvation, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture, Touch-Starved, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vampires, Vomiting, Wetting, master/pet dynamic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2019-11-07 10:32:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17958818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvertedPhantasmagoria/pseuds/InvertedPhantasmagoria
Summary: A certain silence falls over the five of them, something a bit tenser than before. Ayato shivers. It’s cold here, he realizes. He’s cold, shaking.He’s past the point of thinking that this is just a bad dream that he could wake up from. The floor is like ice beneath him, the cage suddenly too small for him to breathe. Ayato wants to believe that this is just that person’s doing, that this is just some punishment that will be over as quickly as Shuu’s trip to the North Pole, but there’s a sinking feeling in his gut that they’re not going to get out so easily. Something iswrong.





	1. [01] With the farewell I left behind yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> This is a commission fic from a very wonderful person on Tumblr!! The whole thing is going to be between 30k and 45k words long, so there's a good ways to go from here! :D I'm anticipating 6 chapters, but that is subject to change if the plot wills it. 
> 
> Anyway, the basic premise here is that the canon Sakamaki switch places with their Pet Au (an au made my me) counterparts. Misery follows. I'm not going to go into too much detail yet, but please see dixbolik-lovers on tumblr for more info! I hope everyone enjoys the fic, and once again, a _huge_ thank you to the lovely person who's making this story possible!

Ayato wakes up to a hard surface unforgivingly solid underneath him, a chill seeping through his bare chest and wrapping its fingers around his lungs. For a split second, a dream follows him. For an instant, there’s lake water filling his lungs, dragging him down and away from the sky. 

Then, he opens his eyes and sees bars. There’s a cage around him. He’s on his stomach, half curled into himself, and there’s barely enough room above his head for him to sit up. He’s not wearing a shirt, just a tattered pair of pants in a texture that feels like it’s woven from straw. The concrete floor is hard and frigid, scraping at his skin even as he breathes. It occurs to Ayato, as the fog of sleep lifts from his mind, that he hasn’t the slightest idea where he is.

Shifting roughly onto his side, bare feet kicking sharply at the bars behind him, Ayato tries to sit up. He thinks, for just a second, that he’s going to be able to break the bars with ease. 

The second he gets upright, Ayato’s head spins like a carnival ride, arms giving out underneath him in a way that very clearly says otherwise.

He collapses right back to the ground, breath heaving sharp and unsteady, chest feeling a bit like it could break open. Something like panic surges fiercely inside of it, hot and fast and pounding at his ribs. No part of this is making  _ sense.  _ He was in his bedroom just hours ago, lounging in the hollowed-out Iron Maiden, and then–, then  _ this.  _

He’s dizzy, head spinning, and Ayato’s stomach suddenly lurches in a way that he vaguely recognizes as hunger magnified a thousand times. 

Retching up nothing but a thin line of bile, Ayato lets himself drop, curling in on himself and half-praying that nothing else will go wrong. He’s slowly gaining awareness, and with every passing moment, another point of pain, of discomfort makes itself known, violently introducing itself. 

He’s about a second away from going back to sleep and pretending like absolutely none of this is happening, hoping,  _ hoping  _ that he wakes up right back where he was with nothing but a nightmare behind him, when he hears a nauseatingly familiar little sob from somewhere close by. 

“Fuck, Kanato?” he asks into darkness that he’s slowly realizing he can’t see through, jerking hard enough to whack his head on the bars. 

Ayato has known those sounds for most of his lifetime. Asking is stupid, when he’s heard his crybaby brother whimpering about something or another for most of his life, but Ayato says it anyway, praying that the answer will be something other than what he already knows it is. 

“A-Ayato?” Kanato’s shaky, raw voice asks from a couple feet away. “What is this? What did you  _ do _ ?” Ayato feels very close to screaming at him that he doesn’t know either, but something about his brother’s tone stops him dead in his tracks. He doesn’t like how fragile it sounds. 

“I’m wondering the same thing,” Reiji’s voice chimes in from somewhere further into the darkness. “This situation is… highly unusual.” His tone is tense, barely collected, sounding a second away from teetering into panic. Ayato forces a laugh out just so he doesn’t have to listen to it. 

A second later, Laito whines something else, complaining about how dirty the floor feels, sniffling over slurred words that Ayato, for once, isn’t sure are part of some sick defence mechanism. Ayato laughs again, harsher, panic edging into his own voice like a bloodstain. For all he’s joked about Kanato being a hysteric, he suddenly feels about a second away from starting to scream and not stopping until this is over. 

“Damn it, you all are useless,” he hisses instead, rolling over and shaking some of the chill out of his limbs. He’s starting to shiver, he notices, and sucks in a breath that’s close to a sob. 

“Ayato, be quiet. Now is no time for infighting. Do any of you have the slightest idea where we are?” Reiji asks, struggling to sound calm. 

“Not a bit,” Laito whimpers. “Do you think it might be that person’s fault? I can’t… Well, I don’t know what else it would be.”

Kanato mumbles something vicious. 

They go back and forth for a few minutes, exchanging ideas and information. All of them appear to be in the same sort of cage, dressed in similar rags, and feeling equally awful. No one can sit up long enough to break the bars. No one has any idea as to what could have happened. 

“I wonder,” Kanato whispers, voice low like he’s telling a secret. “What we’re being punished for now.”

“Now, Kanato. We don’t know that the situation is as such,” Reiji chides, and Ayato can all but see him adjusting his glasses, taking on the tone that means he thinks he knows best. “Please at least try to stay calm. It wouldn’t do to lose our heads too early.”

“What’s  _ early  _ about this?” Ayato hisses. “We’re in cages, stupid. You really think that this isn’t going to be something awful? That it’s all going to turn out to be okay?” Unable to sit still, he lurches back up to his knees, instantly regretting the way his stomach twists low and vicious in his gut. One of them has to be able to break free. They  _ have  _ to. If Ayato has to sit in this awful little cell any longer, he’s going to explode. 

“Ayato, cut it out!” Laito yelps as Kanato starts to sob all over again, choked little sounds that echo out into the darkness. “We aren’t going to get anywhere by panicking!” Even as he says it, Laito himself sounds seconds away from tears, frantic in a way that Ayato has rarely heard. 

“Then  _ you  _ fix it!” 

“Would you all be  _ quiet _ ?” Shuu’s voice suddenly cuts through the silence, followed by the distinct sound of fabric rustling as he rolls over.

“Ah, so the good-for-nothing is here too.” Reiji’s disgust is almost palpable, seeping through his tone, bitter and sharp. 

“N-None of you are fixing this! Quit wasting time; I want to go  _ home. _ ” Kanato cries, stumbling over his own tears. Ayato wants to assume his brother is faking, like always, but there’s something decidedly frantic about the way Kanato’s voice breaks on the final sob. 

“Shut up. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Are you really going to sleep through this?” Ayato all but yells, one terrifyingly shaky hand grabbing at the bars in front of him. 

“I feel like shit,” Shuu mumbles. “Wake me up when this is over.”

“Escaping reality as always. How  _ pathetic. _ ”

“Come on! Can we stop fighting for five minutes?” Laito whines, shifting just enough that Ayato knows he’s close. “Haven’t we all admitted it? It’s not going to help anyone to sit here and fuss!”

“Wait. Subaru’s missing,” Ayato blurts it out as soon as the thought settles in his head, the sudden realization that Subaru would have been having a fit, would have  _ broken the bars  _ if he was there. “Us five are here, wherever here is, so what about him?”

A certain silence falls over the five of them, something a bit tenser than before. Ayato shivers. It’s cold here, he realizes. He’s cold, shaking.

He’s past the point of thinking that this is just a bad dream that he could wake up from. The floor is like ice beneath him, the cage suddenly too small for him to breathe. Ayato wants to believe that this is just that person’s doing, that this is just some punishment that will be over as quickly as Shuu’s trip to the North Pole, but there’s a sinking feeling in his gut that they’re not going to get out so easily. Something is  _ wrong.  _

Things stay quiet, quiet enough that Ayato can make out his brothers’ frantic breaths in the still air. Kanato is still crying. Ayato thinks for a moment that he’d sort of like to hit him just to shut him up, but the feeling passes just as fast, fading into thin air. 

“Get ahold of yourselves,” Reiji mutters, sounding dangerously close to panic himself. “This mess will be taken care of soon enough.”

As if on cue, light floods the room.

Ayato flinches, hard, light near searing his eyes with the sudden brightness. He scrunches his eyes shut, arms abruptly giving out and dropping him back to the floor of the cage. 

As soon as he can get his eyes to open without pain, Ayato finally sees the room around him. He’s in a cage, a  _ kennel,  _ maybe three feet tall and made of thick, twisted metal bars. More cages stretch on to either side of him, Kanato one over to his left, Laito two over to his right. There are just as many across a small pathway, Shuu and Reiji on that side. 

There’s something wrong. Kanato’s skinny, but he’s not  _ that  _ thin. Laito’s hair shouldn’t be that long. Reiji isn’t wearing his glasses. Shuu’s shoulders are suddenly too narrow. Ayato looks down at himself and sees a chest so thin that his ribs are visible, every bone drawn up tight to the skin. The rags that make up his pants are approximately the color of vomit, barely hiding the thin lines of his curled up legs. 

This isn’t his body. It is, it  _ has  _ to be, but at the same time every part of it is smaller and weaker than Ayato remembers. Vaguely, he hears a panicked shriek, a distressed whine, and realizes that his brothers must be coming to the same conclusion that he is, must be seeing the same.

“What’s wrong with the damn things today?” a man’s voice, rough and angry, cuts through the fog of panic clouding Ayato’s head. He’s snapped back to reality fast, just in time to see the man enter the little hall. 

The person all but stomps into the room, work boots pounding on the concrete. He’s big and burly, just old enough to be going grey, and something about his expression sends an instinctive bolt of terror into Ayato’s stomach, like his body knows something he doesn’t. 

“Shut up already!” The man bellows, kicking the edge of Kanato’s cage with a  _ bang,  _ hard enough to make it rattle. 

For a second, Ayato thinks that Kanato is about to scream. But then, his mouth snaps shut with a soft little pop, huge, watery eyes staring up at the man. Ayato shivers, hard. There’s a bad feeling in his gut, like something is going to go horribly wrong at any second. The man kicks the cage again, still glaring, and Kanato squeaks, scooting back just far enough that Ayato gets the feeling he’s thinking the same thing. 

In this new light, Kanato looks so small, so thin. Ayato can’t remember seeing him look so little since they were kids, the fragile lines of his collarbone standing out against knobby shoulders and a near-concave chest.

“Excuse me,” Reiji starts, a faint tremor in his voice. “What is the meaning of this? For what reason do you have us cag–” 

Just as quickly, the man kicks out at him too, cutting Reiji off with a  _ clang _ . Reiji doesn’t make a sound, but his eyes widen ever so slightly. If this was a normal situation, Ayato would expect to see a flash of satisfaction on Shuu’s face, but instead, there’s nothing but tension hanging in the air. 

“Wait, wait,” Laito whines, audibly trying to sound harmless, “please, don’t get rough. We just want to know why we’re here.” He smiles in that pacifying way that means he’s trying to get something he wants. Ayato knows that tone, that expression, and if he wasn’t just as desperate, he’d be disgusted that his brother thinks that such a pathetic move would work. 

The man doesn’t answer this time, just takes a few steps over to the far wall. For a second, Ayato thinks that he’s just going to leave. 

Instead, the man grabs a thick, brick-red hose off of the wall, twisting a dial and pointing it  _ right at them _ –

At first, his target is Laito. The first thing Ayato hears is a shriek, his brother’s voice gone high and panicked. Bits of the spray are hitting Ayato even from this distance, and it’s  _ freezing _ , colder than the floor, than Ayato would have thought was possible. The man keeps the spray on Laito for half a minute, until there’s no more noise, then turns it right onto Ayato. 

The frigid spray hits him like a punch to the chest. The pressure of the water is downright painful, pounding against his skin hard enough to draw a small, frantic yelp out of his throat. He can’t move, can’t breathe, and there’s no room to scramble back and hide. His arms give out all over again, much too quickly, and he collapses to the floor, face pressed against the wet concrete as the hose beats down on his back like it wants to bruise. 

After what feels like an eternity, the water is gone. On to Kanato next, if the sudden howl is any clue. Ayato lays shaking, shivering so hard he thinks he’s going to throw up. If he thought he was cold before, now he’s downright freezing, shaking hard enough to hear the clatter of his teeth. 

Kanato keeps shrieking. Ayato manages to look up. It’s been twice as long as the water was kept on him or Laito. Shuu and Reiji, across the hallway, have twin looks of horror etched onto their faces. 

It’s the first time in years Ayato thinks they’ve felt the same.

Finally, finally, Kanato’s howls die down to muffled sobs. The hose is finally taken off of him, leaving a soaked, shaking mess behind. Kanato is shuddering so hard that Ayato can  _ see  _ it, lips and fingers faintly blue.

Shuu is next. He doesn’t make a sound, but Ayato can see him trembling, struggling to spit out the water that sprays into his nose and mouth. Laito is still coughing hard, shaking just as badly, and Kanato has collapsed against the floor of his cage, breath tearing through his ribcage, every bone visible through the thin, pallid skin. 

The water isn’t on Shuu for long. The man turns the hose onto Reiji, something like satisfaction creeping onto his whiskered face. 

“Don’t feel like sassing now, huh?” he laughs when Reiji _squeaks._ Ayato’s head spins. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard such a pathetic noise come from his brother, ever seen him at anything less than composed. Reiji collapses after about ten seconds, his head whacking against the bars as he falls with a sickening clang against the metal. 

After a long minute, the man finally turns the hose off, callously hanging it up and leaving the room.

Ayato has just enough time to see how Shuu is shaking, eyes wide with a look of fear Ayato has never seen from him before, just enough time to see what he thinks are sobs shuddering through Reiji’s chest.

Then, the lights go off, plunging the five of them into darkness.

. . . 

Subaru opens his eyes to darkness. That in itself isn’t particularly unusual. His coffin is small enough that even vampire night-vision doesn’t do too much good. What’s most definitely  _ not  _ usual, though, are the chains around his wrists and what feels disturbingly like a collar at his neck. 

Snapping awake so quickly it makes his head spin, Subaru tries to sit up, to stand up. He gets to his knees before the chain at his throat forces his head down, pulling taut fast enough that it  _ hurts.  _

Growling, Subaru brings a hand to the chain, ready to snap it like paper, but when he tugs on it, it doesn’t so much as crack. 

As the fog of sleep fades, Subaru notices a series of things; first, that very nearly every part of him hurts, hurts more than he can remember feeling in a long time. Second, that wherever he is is  _ freezing,  _ cold concrete beneath him seeping its chill slowly into his bones. Finally, Subaru realizes that a good portion of the pain around his stomach is hunger, the kind that feels like spikes are digging into his skin from the inside. 

It’s quickly sinking in that something is horribly wrong. 

For a second, Subaru wonders if this is one of Ayato’s pranks, almost hopes that one of his brothers is going to pop up and laugh at him. At least then, he’d know who to beat up. 

Instead, all that happens is that Subaru sits in frigid silence, slowly becoming more and more aware of just how awful he feels. 

Because he doesn’t know quite else what to do, he tugs at the chains around his wrists again, trying to ignore the panic seeping into his thoughts. Even his clothes have changed to rough, loose pants that scratch at his skin, one more violation. Swearing, Subaru rolls over fast enough to make the chain pull tight at his throat all over again. 

Nothing happens. Subaru is alone in the darkness, the only sounds his own ragged breath and the faint sounds of the chains clinking together. He feels dangerously weak, head spinning like it threatens to force him to the floor and keep him there. He’s shaking, shivering with cold and fear and all sorts of awful things that Subaru really, really doesn’t want to think about. He hasn’t felt this helpless since–, since a time that he  _ definitely  _ doesn’t want to think about, since he was too weak to be anything else.

After a while, a light flickers on from somewhere, apparently outside the one door in the little room. 

Subaru can finally see where he’s at, but that isn’t exactly a comfort. The room– more like a cell– is small and dark, with only a small window embedded in the door. The floor is concrete, filthy with dirt and a faint layer of slime, and the walls aren’t much better.

The entire room is maybe eight feet long and wide, barely enough for a few steps either direction. He’s chained to the far wall by a collar at his throat, the cuffs around his hands looped around a hook in the floor. 

There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be able to break the chains, shouldn’t be strong enough to tear through them in a second. The room suddenly feels too small, too tight, and Subaru faintly hears himself breathing a triple-time rhythm, still not getting enough air. 

After a few more minutes, the light goes out. 

. . . 

Shuu wakes up to music. There are little speakers in his ears, playing a soft piano melody that makes him feel a bit like he’s melting. It’s the first time in so, so long that he’s been able to listen to something so nice, and for just a minute, he doesn’t think about anything but the notes. 

All too quickly, though, it occurs to him that he’s not in his cage. His eyes snap open, a bolt of panic stabbing into his chest like a blade. 

He’s on a couch, plush and solid and soft, in a room that’s fancier than anything he’s ever seen. Just as quickly, he realizes that he’s dressed in  _ human  _ clothes. Being moved in his sleep is one thing, but this much change… there’s no way even he could have slept through so much. Instinctively, Shuu curls in on himself, shoulders hunching in. 

He doesn’t want to be beaten. It’s not his  _ fault  _ that he’s–, he’s in these clothes, on someone’s furniture, not where he’s supposed to be. Shuu is sorely tempted to go back to sleep and deal with the problem later, to hope that this is all some awful dream, and he’ll wake up back where he belongs, with only a day of sleeping on the floor of his cage to dread. Instead, he slides off the couch, slow and careful, like someone could burst in and see him at any moment. He eases himself down to the floor. 

It’s not  _ fair.  _ He wasn’t awake to say no, and now there’s a damn good reason for his breeder, for  _ anyone  _ to punish him for being somewhere he wasn’t supposed to. And he won’t be able to so much as defend himself. 

Please, Shuu thinks, please just let them leave him alone. 

He’s been content to die in his cage for so long now, comforted only by the idea that it will be a peaceful, relatively painless end. 

Sleeping until he never wakes up is seeming like a better and better option. A pathetic little part of him hopes that someone bought him while he was out, that he’s maybe been moved into a new home. 

The smarter part of him, the part that’s been passed over a thousand times for others with better attitudes, more energy, those who are more eager to please reminds him that he’s not going to get that lucky. 

Shuu lays himself down on the floor, on his stomach and half curled in. The music is still in his ears, soft and comforting. He’ll hold onto this for a bit, he thinks, just until someone takes it away. He’s already set to be punished, so being just a bit selfish can only cause a little more pain. 

He’ll wait and be good. He’ll stay on the floor, quiet and out of the way, until someone comes for him. Good, for once. Like he’s pretending that he’s something worth keeping. Maybe whoever is here, whoever moved him, will go easy on him that way.

After a while, how long, he’s not sure, the door slowly creaks open. Shuu’s eyes flutter open. His body tenses, waiting for a kick to wake him up, sharp words telling him just how much trouble he’s in. 

“Um… Shuu?” a small, soft voice says, footsteps hesitantly approaching him. “You’re on the floor?”

Shuu glances up, eyes half-lidded. It’s a human girl, petite and dressed in pink, with soft hair and small hands. Her eyes are wide and nervous, and Shuu tries not to flinch. He hasn’t seen this human before. Maybe he  _ has  _ gotten lucky and someone took him in. 

He nods, easing himself up onto his hands and knees, still staying low and small. It’s weird. He feels stronger, somehow, like moving doesn’t hurt as much as it should. His arms don’t even shake when they hold his weight. 

“Ah, that’s…” the girl trails off, making a face like she’s not sure what to say. Shuu ducks his head. He’s trying, this time, trying to be good. 

“You haven’t met me before, right?” she asks, and Shuu shakes his head. “Okay, um. My name is Yui. There’s been a mix-up, I think. Would you please come with me. I won’t do anything to hurt you.” The girl’s voice is so soft. She doesn’t sound even a bit like she’s going to kick him. 

Shuu crawls over to her feet obediently. 

Yui makes a strained little sound, but starts walking anyway, pausing every so often to make sure he can keep up. Shuu keeps his head down, just focusing on her feet, not looking around at anything he shouldn’t. 

They go through a couple of short hallways, not even far enough for the wood to start to hurt Shuu’s knees. Nothing on him hurts, he’s noticing. He feels strong enough to keep up with her, like he has enough energy not to give up and hope she won’t be angry. 

In the room where Yui stops, four of his brothers are already there. Reiji is sitting up with a back so straight he could have been a statue, visibly trying not to shake. Kanato is under a table, eyes wide and wet, like he can’t believe he’s not bleeding yet. Ayato is inches away from Laito’s side, glancing around nervously, shifting where he sits. Laito himself has an unreadable expression, something deceptively serene. 

With a quick promise that she’ll be back in just a moment, Yui scurries out of the room, low heels clicking on the wood. Shuu glances at his brothers, all staring at him with looks of varying degrees of afraid. 

“It’s not real,” Kanato mumbles from under the table, curling in on himself further. “I think I’m dreaming.” 

“We’re all having the same dream then,” Ayato adds. Then, almost immediately after. “Do you think she’s gonna come back? What if she does? She hasn’t done anything mean yet, right, Laito?” His eyes are going almost comically wide, shoulders shivering like he’s going to break. 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Laito replies. “You know that humans don’t act that sweet unless there’s a catch.” His head drops, gaze flickering over to the door again, intentionally keeping his face blank and calm. 

“Quiet,” Reiji hisses. “We were not told to chatter. Stay still and  _ behave,  _ unless you all want to ruin this for all of us.” His tone is more frantic than angry, and even as he speaks, he doesn’t so much as turn his head. Reiji’s hands are shaking against the wood, hard enough that his clipped-short nails make little clicking noises with every tremble. 

Shuu doesn’t answer any of them, just lowers himself down to the floor exactly where Yui left him. The chances of this lasting are slim. The chances of Yui really being as nice as she’s acting are practically zero. They’ve all imagined humans who smile and speak softly, only punishing when their property has done something really wrong, but those things don’t exist for them. Hoping will just make it hurt more in the end. 

He tries to tell himself that he’s just obeying so he doesn’t get hurt, that he’s just doing what anyone would to minimize the coming pain.

Even so, there’s the faintest flicker of longing in his chest.

Yui comes back a few minutes later, Subaru in tow. He’s moving low to the ground, shaking all over. There are faint tear-tracks on his cheeks. His expression is one of terror, a sharp fear that Shuu has never seen from him. 

“Um, alright,” Yui starts when Subaru is with the rest of them. “I think there’s been some sort of mistake here.” 

Shuu’s heart drops like a stone. So it  _ was  _ just a mistake. They’re only there because someone messed up. Beside him, Ayato’s jaw starts to tremble. Reiji stiffens even more, visibly struggling to stay still. 

“It’s… I don’t know what’s happened. Ah, I guess I should start with this,” Yui chews at her lip a bit, rose-colored eyes fixed on the six of them like she doesn’t know what to do. “What do you all think you’re doing here. And, um, it’s okay for you to talk…?” 

“You bought us, right?” Ayato blurts out, panic in his voice. “You’re our new owner, right?” The words spill out faster than anyone can stop him, pathetically voicing the desperation that all of them feel.

“Ayato,  _ please, _ ” Reiji butts in. “Miss Yui, I apologize,” he ducks his head a bit, shoulders shaking, “he’s, he’s just nervous. It’s not a reflection of our behavior, I assure you. We can–,  _ I  _ can keep control of myself. Whatever the reason for which you’ve taken us in, I beg you not to reconsider quite yet. I can prove my worth, if you’ll just allow me the time…!” 

Under the table, Kanato bites down on his lip to stifle a whimper.

Yui’s face does something funny, like she’s seeing something that she can’t quite believe. She looks somewhere in between nervous and horrified. Shuu wonders exactly how they’ve all managed to ruin everything so quickly. Shuu wonders how long it will be before she returns them all, if she even bothers to. She could always just kick them out. 

Instead, Yui smiles, very softly. She sits down, bringing herself to the same level as the rest of them, kneeling carefully in front of them. 

“Please don’t worry. I’ll, um, I intend to keep you. I won’t send you back, okay? You don’t have to look so scared. There’s, there’s something going on here, but… you don’t have to worry about it. I promise I won’t get rid of you.” Yui’s rose-colored eyes squinch up like she’s about to cry, even as she keeps smiling. Her hands fold in her lap, shaking a bit, like even she’s not quite sure of what she’s doing, what she’s saying. 

Shuu’s ears are ringing. He can barely believe what he’s hearing. He was so,  _ so  _ sure that it wouldn’t last, but Yui, his  _ owner  _ is insisting that she means to keep all of them. It’s better than anything Shuu has dared to hope.

“I just, um, I need to think for a bit. This is a bit sudden,” Yui continues, still making that happy-sad smile. “I promise I’ll come back. Please wait here for just a little while, okay?”

Yui is gone, then, slipping out of what Shuu is realizing is a large living room. It’s just him and his brothers again, left to process the news.

“I’m dreaming,” Kanato mumbles again, swaying. 

“Shut up!” Ayato hisses. “She’ll hear you! Don’t  _ ruin  _ it.” His eyes are downright frantic, chest heaving with something close to panic. 

Laito is still staring at where Yui was a second ago, barely blinking. His face is frozen, body rooted in place. Shuu doesn’t want to think about what’s going on in his brother’s head  _ normally,  _ and somehow, this seems worse. 

Reiji switches to scolding them, finally moving from where he knelt. There’s something tense in the air, something dangerously vulnerable in all of them. This is the closest they– any of them– have come to having an owner, the closest anyone has come to keeping them. Shuu’s head is spinning. He still can barely believe what he heard. Trusting Yui’s words means that he could get hurt so  _ easily.  _

It would be so much simpler to lay down and wake up when things have worked themselves out, when everything is decided, and Shuu can just take whatever happened while he was out. 

It’s at that point that Subaru finally speaks up. 

“There’s something wrong.”

“Honestly,” Reiji starts, “are you going to try to complain about this too? Let me guess, you don’t think she can be trusted.”

“ _ No _ ,” Subaru bites out, visible eye wide with panic. “There’s something  _ wrong.  _ This isn’t my body. Think about it; don’t you all feel stronger than normal? Doesn’t something feel off?”

It sounds crazy, Shuu thinks for a second. And then, that Subaru has a point. Since he woke up, he hasn’t felt nearly as exhausted, as slow as usual. He was able to follow Yui without getting tired. He’s been sitting up for probably twenty minutes, and he doesn’t particularly feel like laying down, except to escape the worries prodding at his chest. 

“Come on! That’s ridiculous! Everything’s going good for once; why do you have to start with that crazy shit?” Ayato growls. “What makes you so sure that we’re not just feeling better for once?”

Without a word, Subaru opens his mouth, tugging his upper lip out of the way. Two small, sharp fangs are exactly where they should be. 

Subaru had his fangs taken out three years ago. 

Everyone goes suddenly, abruptly silent. Ayato’s mouth snaps shut with a soft sound. Okay, Shuu thinks, trying to avoid panic, that’s most definitely not right. There might be something wrong after all.

“What do we do now?” Kanato whispers, sounding small and scared. 

Subaru flinches, curling in on himself a bit. He’s never been good at being the center of attention. “Dunno,” he mumbles, jaw trembling, “I just woke up like this. I don’t remember… I don’t think anyone could have done anything.” The unspoken,  _ no one would put fangs back in a vampire _ hangs in the air like a cloud of smog. No one wants to mention it. 

“We’ll deal with it,” Reiji states, leaving no room for argument. “This is the least of our worries. We can think about… about whatever you’re claiming later. What matters is making sure that none of us ruin this.” 

Despite the ‘us’ words, Shuu doesn’t have to guess that Reiji is mostly concerned with himself. The lot of them have been lost causes for so long, it’s no wonder that Reiji sees the most point in prolonging his own survival. Shuu doesn’t know which of them wouldn’t. 

It’s obvious that they don’t have much of a choice. Not taking the chance at a  _ home  _ would be stupid. If they don’t, they’re as good as dead. Fuck, if Yui even gets sick of them, if they mess it up bad enough that she doesn’t want them anymore, they really would be dead. Whatever’s wrong right now, whatever’s going on, it can’t be as bad as things would be if Yui returned them. Worse, if Yui threw them out. 

“Reiji’s right,” Laito says, eyes flickering nervously to the door that Yui left through. “We’ll deal with it.”

There’s something final about the words. 


	2. [02] Wishing to be able to smile at the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter is done!! This chapter features the canon boys in the Pet Au world, and what happens to them in the early hours of the switch Since this is the Pet Au side, of course, things get pretty dark. >.> Warnings for this chapter include blood, descriptions of wounds, bodily fluids, vomiting, some non-con vibes, and what pretty much amounts to torture. The next chapter will be significantly fluffier, but please read carefully if anything in this one bothers you! I still intend for there to be six chapters to this fic, and I'm thinking 40,000 for a final word count! :D Thank you to anyone who's reading!!

It’s a few minutes later that Subaru makes a horrible revelation. 

His head is slowly starting to clear, working its way from dizzy and clouded to something resembling normal. Subaru is just starting to tighten his muscles, stretching in place and testing his restraints once again, when he notices that his mouth is feeling strange, the weight somehow  _ off _ . 

He runs his tongue along his teeth, and finds two matching holes where his fangs are meant to be. 

A bolt of terror hits Subaru to the gut like a knife.

For a second, Subaru thinks that he might pass out. He runs his tongue over the holes again, again, then once more, praying each time that he’ll be mistaken. Somewhere around the fourth time, his jaw locks up from panic, biting down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood. 

He’s dreaming. He  _ has  _ to be. He had fangs yesterday, and–, and he doesn’t remember anything happening to them. Nothing hurts, nothing feels fresh. There’s a dull, steady ache running through his whole body, but the holes in his mouth don’t hurt worse than anything else. 

_ There are  _ **_holes_ ** _ in his mouth.  _

Subaru’s head spins. His ears ring. A wave of nausea surges through him like a punch to the stomach, and he retches hard on empty air. 

He can’t move, can’t so much as get his hands up to his mouth to feel where his fangs used to be. He’s tied down and  _ helpless,  _ too weak to break the chains, at the mercy of whatever–, whoever put him there in the first place. The darkness around him is suddenly suffocating, choking, heavy around his chest like a vice squeezing at his lungs. 

Hyperventilating, twisting frantically at the chains, Subaru thinks for a second that he’s going to pass out. Just as quickly, a rush of fury surges in and covers up the terror, strangling the fear before it can choke him.

Subaru  _ howls,  _ not sure if he’s scared or angry or both. He yanks on the chains harder, scrabbling forwards against the concrete and trying to get enough leverage to break free. His feet scrape against the rough ground, tearing gashes into his skin as the collar pulls tight at his neck, cutting off his air, strangling his voice before any more screams can come out. 

Viciously, Subaru twists at the chains. He’s bleeding. He can feel it. His wrists are splitting open around the jagged edge of the cuffs. There’s so little air going into his lungs that the darkness behind his eyes is bursting with colors, starbursts exploding in time with his heartbeat. 

But finally, finally, there’s no energy left in him to fight. Subaru’s weak body collapses, heaving for air and shuddering almost painfully. 

He can’t do it. He can’t break out. That was all the strength that he  _ had,  _ and it still wasn’t enough. After fighting with everything he had, he’s left heaving for air on the ground, no less helpless than before. 

There’s no way for him to even curl up and hide. Subaru doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite so terrified in his life, chained up and too weak to struggle, holes in his mouth where his fangs are supposed to be. Somehow, he has a feeling that everything is only going to get worse from here. 

Subaru lays there for a while, how long, he’s not sure. The room stays dark and small and cold. The light outside doesn’t flicker on again. Subaru starts to wonder if anyone is ever going to come for him, or if he’s just been chained up in this little cell to die. If anyone  _ does  _ come, that could be a whole new world of hurt. Subaru isn’t sure which thought scares him more.

The reality that he’s well and truly  _ helpless  _ is slowly sinking in. He’s still weak, barely able to hold his head up after the struggle against his chains. His stomach is a single, burning point of pain, hunger eating at his insides like it could chew through the skin and burst out. There’s nothing he can do to save himself. He’s at the mercy of whoever put him in this room in the first place, whoever chained him up and left him in a dark little cell. 

Whoever took out his  _ fangs _ . 

By the time the door creaks open, Subaru is back to hyperventilating, breathing so hard that it aches. A sliver of light washes over him, and someone, a man about Subaru’s size, steps inside. 

If this situation was anything resembling normal, Subaru thinks he would have snapped the guy’s neck and made his escape. 

Instead, Subaru stays very, very still. He’s dumb, he knows it, but he’s still not stupid enough to try to fight anyone in the state he’s in. The man kneels down and starts unhooking the chains holding Subaru to the floor. For some reason, Subaru’s chest tightens with some instinctive terror. 

As soon as his wrists are loose, without a word, the man hooks what appears to be a leash onto Subaru’s collar. His stomach turns, hard, humiliation surging hot and fierce at the gesture. When the man tugs at him like he’s supposed to crawl, that humiliation only triples. 

“Behave,” the man states, clear that pain will follow if Subaru does otherwise. “You’re finally getting let out, so don’t cause any trouble.”

It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense– what does the man  _ mean  _ by ‘finally’–, but the message is clear. Feeling sick to his stomach, Subaru carefully nods his head, hating the way it makes the room spin. 

They took his fangs out before. 

Subaru doesn’t want to know what could be next. 

The message that he’s supposed to crawl is obvious. Honestly, Subaru doesn’t know if he could stand up if he tried. He stays low to the ground, trying to ignore the way the concrete bites into the skin of his hands and knees, the way the leash tugs at his neck every time he gets too slow. It’s  _ beyond  _ humiliating. Subaru knows he doesn’t have a choice. 

The room that the man leads Subaru to is wide and open, a row of cages big enough for people along one wall, and a broad pathway along the other. There’s a door on either end, and a window, sunshine streaming in. 

With a firm hand on the leash, the man guides Subaru into one of the cages roughly. Subaru has started to shake, sick, heavy fear weighing down his stomach and chilling him from the inside out. He still doesn’t know what’s happening, why he’s in this awful place to begin with, but what he  _ does  _ know is that struggling isn’t an option anymore. He’s already been mutilated. There’s nothing saying that these people can’t do worse. 

As soon as he’s in the cage, Subaru scoots back to the far wall, bloody feet stinging with every slide against the rough floor. The wall against his back is a small comfort. He wishes he had his coffin to hide in. 

Subaru sits there, breathing double-time and fighting to stay calm. 

After a few minutes, the man is back, this time dragging Ayato and Kanato along with him. The two of them are also leashed. Ayato is mumbling curses, visibly furious, and Kanato is red-faced, eyes overflowing with shockingly genuine tears. Subaru’s first thought is horror– his brothers are there too, something was strong enough to get  _ more  _ of them–, but his second thought is a faint relief that he isn’t alone. 

“Ah! Subaru!” Ayato gasps, eyes blown wide when he sees Subaru huddled in his cage. “You’re here too!?”

The man holding Ayato’s leash takes the moment of surprise to sharply shove him into his own cage, unfazed by the squawk of surprise that Ayato makes. The door is latched behind him without a second thought. 

Subaru’s jaw twitches. He has a bad feeling about this. He’s already aware of just how cruel these people can be, but is Ayato? There’s no way of knowing if the two of them know to not fight, and damn it, Subaru has hated his brothers for years, but he doesn’t think he wants to see one of them  _ die.  _

Ayato is saying something else, but the words don’t quite make it through. Kanato has moved on to sobbing, huge, heavy things coupled with streaming tears and little whimpers. Subaru’s ears are ringing. That’s the sign of an incoming tantrum. He’s heard that particular pattern of sobs for years. He knows exactly what’s coming. 

The man grabs Kanato by the shoulders, hands huge against his little brother’s small frame, and Subaru braces himself to see something awful. 

“Don’t  _ touch  _ me!” Kanato screeches, sobs rising to a shriek. “Get your awful hands off of me! I’ll kill you, you stupid human! I’ll  _ gut  _ you!” He struggles viciously, scratching at the man’s arms and screeching, tears streaking down his puffy cheeks and eyes narrowing with rage. 

The man draws his arm back and punches Kanato in the nose. 

Kanato  _ howls  _ this time, his cries of anger quickly switching to pain. He’s on the ground in a second, clutching at his face and screaming. 

The man merely stands up, very literally kicking Kanato into his cage. There are spatters of blood on the concrete where Kanato fell, and a larger puddle is quickly forming under him inside the cage. 

Beside Subaru, Ayato’s face has gone almost white. 

“K-Kanato, are you okay?” he asks, voice shaking horribly. Ayato’s eyes are so wide that Subaru can see more white than green. He’s all but pressed to the bars of his cage, leaning towards his brother. 

Kanato keeps screaming. 

Subaru feels like the world is spinning. He was expecting something awful, he knew it was coming, but the man didn’t so much as blink. It’s not natural. They’re _vampires._ Humans aren’t supposed to be able to chain them down, to make them scream, to take their fangs out and stuff them in cages and leave them in dark little cells to _rot._

Eventually, Kanato’s howls die down. Ayato keeps talking to him, even though he sounds more terrified than comforting. There’s a decent-sized puddle of blood underneath Kanato, soaking into his hair and leaving smears of red on his cheeks, and when he moves his hands away from his face for long enough for the two of them to see, his nose is visibly broken.

Kanato slips into some sort of noiseless terror, pressing himself into the far corner of his cage and breathing so hard that Subaru can see his chest heaving up and down. His eyes are open, but unfocused and blank. 

“Subaru,” Ayato starts, sounding terrified, “what’s happening. That was a human, r-right? How did he hurt Kanato like that?”

Biting down on his lip, Ayato keeps staring right at Kanato. He’s gripping the bars of his cage so tightly that his fingers have gone white. Subaru doesn’t think he’s seen his brother this scared since Cordelia was alive. It’s disconcerting, familiar in all the worst ways. 

Subaru wants to answer, but he can’t make his mouth move. The holes where his fangs were burn with a phantom pain. 

Only a few minutes pass before the man comes back. This time, there’s a second beside him, wearing the same uniform. They’re talking, laughing about what a waste it is to drag the ‘useless ones’ out for a showing, bemoaning how much extra work it is. A sinking feeling hits Subaru’s gut when he realizes who they’re talking about. 

“See,” the first one says, “that’s the brat that screamed at me. It’s acting weird today. All of them are.”

Whatever they say next, Subaru doesn’t hear it. The second man brings out a couple small pouches of red. Subaru’s stomach twists, hard. He knows without even smelling it that it’s blood. 

Next to him, Ayato stiffens, mouth slipping open. Kanato’s eyes go very wide. Subaru can only assume that they’re as starved as he is. 

“Pathetic,” the second guard laughs. “They always get so worked up on feeding days. You’d think vampires would be a little tougher.” Subaru’s face  _ burns.  _ The guard is right. The three of them are eyeing the blood like animals. Subaru’s stomach feels rather like it’s eating a hole in his insides. 

“This one first,” the first guard says, taking one of the little pouches. He pulls out a knife and slices the top off of it, pouring the blood onto the floor of Subaru’s cage. “The ones that have their fangs out are hilarious!”

What happens next, Subaru isn’t proud of. But vampire hunger is a powerful thing, and when his stomach tightens agonizingly, he’s leaning forward to lick the blood off the floor before he can stop himself. It’s beyond disgusting. The blood is old and stale, half-rancid, and the dirt of the floor mingles with the already acrid flavor, coating his tongue with grit. 

“S-Subaru,” Ayato starts, sounding horrified. “What–?”

The second guard holds a pouch up in front of Kanato. “You want it?” he asks, smirking with amusement. “Ask nicely, or I’ll take it away.”

Kanato’s lip wobbles, his blood-smeared face scrunching up with misery. It only takes a second for him to start begging. 

The guard tosses the pouch of blood into his cage, and Kanato is on it in an instant, sinking his fangs in and messily sucking up the contents. He makes a face at the taste, visibly gagging, but doesn’t stop until the pouch is empty. Even then, he keeps licking at the empty plastic left behind. 

It’s pathetic. They’re all pathetic. Even with the small amount of blood in his stomach, Subaru is still so hungry he could cry. A pouch that size isn’t anywhere near enough for a meal, especially not when they’re as hungry as Subaru feels. He can already assume that he’s not getting more, but that doesn’t stop the humiliating instinct to start begging and hope that one of the guards takes pity on him long enough to throw him another one. 

“Your turn,” the second guard says, holding the last pouch up in front of Ayato. “You’d better convince me that you want it.”

Ayato’s eyes go very wide, jaw trembling. For a second, Subaru thinks that he’s going to cooperate, going to behave long enough to get the blood at the very least. Then, Ayato opens his mouth. 

“Fuck you! I won’t beg for that nasty shit! No fucking way I’m gonna act that stupid,” Ayato snaps, voice dropping into a growl. The guard’s eyes widen, and Subaru wants to scream. That was the  _ worst  _ thing Ayato could do, the dumbest possible move he could have made. 

Slowly, the guard’s mouth stretches into a patronizing smile. He stands up, unlatches the door to Ayato’s cage, and steps inside. 

Ayato opens his mouth again. The guard kicks him in the stomach.

Curling in on himself, Ayato makes an awful, choked noise, gagging on nothing. The guard kicks him again, heavy boot hitting the soft part of Ayato’s stomach with a sickeningly solid sound _.  _

This time, Ayato does more than retch. With the smell of blood thick in the air, he heaves up what little in his stomach, bile and saliva dripping in thick strings out of his mouth and onto the guard’s shoes. Ayato clutches at his stomach, retching over and over again until nothing comes up. 

The guard kicks him in the ribs a few times just to make his point.

Ayato is left shaking on the floor, face red and pained, arms wrapped protectively, uselessly around his stomach. His skin is already bruising. There are tears streaking down his cheeks, eyes blown dark and wide. Subaru would be surprised if his brother didn’t have a cracked rib at this point, if the panicked, strangled sobs slipping out of him are any indication. 

“Now,” the guard starts, a half-smile still hanging on his lips, “I think you’re going to be a little nicer to me. You have two choices; you can come over here and lick your mess off my shoes, or you can not eat this month. Up to you which choice you make, but make it quick.”

Ayato shudders hard, throat still spasming. He looks like he might be sick again, whether from pain or terror Subaru isn’t sure. 

But little by little, he hauls himself to his knees. The look in Ayato’s eyes is nothing short of defeat, blank gaze staring off at nothing. He scoots over just far enough to be at the guard’s boots, dropping his head obediently. It’s the most compliant, the most  _ broken  _ Subaru has ever seen his brother, so much lower than he thought Ayato’s pride could fall. 

The pink of Ayato’s tongue flickers out, lapping uselessly at the guard’s boots. There were only a few spatters of bile on his shoes to begin with, and Ayato winds up merely dragging his tongue along dirt and grime. Ayato’s eyes scrunch closed, a look of disgust working its way onto his face, but he doesn’t stop for a second, doesn’t quit licking until the guard steps away, laughing. Ayato is shaking hard, shoulders trembling like he’s going to fall apart. Subaru knows exactly how helpless he feels. 

It seems a miracle that the guards do toss him a pouch of blood. For a second, Subaru thinks that Ayato might be too shaken, too terrified to touch it. Vampire hunger wins out in the end, though, and Ayato too drains the little pouch dry, gagging all over again even as he does. 

When he’s done, Ayato crawls slowly to the back of his cage. He flops down like a dead thing, breathing so hard that Subaru can see it. 

There’s nothing but terror in his eyes, every shred of defiance replaced with a horrifyingly familiar emptiness. In the cage over, Kanato is still huddling against his own back wall. He doesn’t appear to have even  _ seen  _ what happened with Ayato, too lost in his terror to pay attention to the world around him. The two of them look downright broken. 

Subaru sits in his own cage, nauseatingly thankful that he didn’t anger anyone. He feels something close to broken himself. 

. . . 

In a hall full of cages, Laito is shaking, more afraid than he can ever remember being. A few minutes ago, the guards came in and took Ayato and Kanato away, dragging them out of their cages and off through the far door. Things had been bad enough when they were all trapped together, but not knowing where those two even  _ are…  _

Laito spends the next few minutes trying to think. Humans are supposed to be easy to manipulate, and if he can just figure out what these humans want, he should be able to get somewhere with them. 

But begging, asking nicely just to be told what’s going on had only ended in Laito getting sprayed with freezing water, left to huddle wet and shaking in his cage until he thought that his teeth were going to break from how hard they were chattering. No one would want that to happen again. 

Thinking should be easy, should be an escape from the bars closing him in, but Laito’s brothers are  _ gone,  _ there’s nowhere for him to hide, and even his thoughts are too scrambled to get anywhere but dead ends. 

Across the hall from him, Reiji and Shuu are in equal states of unrest. Well, Reiji is. Shuu appears to have fallen asleep, flopped down on the floor of his cage like a dead thing. But his eyes are shut a little too tightly to be natural, and the rhythm of his breath is still sharp and tense. He’s probably just trying to sleep the problem away, praying that he wakes up when someone else has solved the mess that they’re all in. 

Reiji, meanwhile, is fidgeting, shifting in his cage every few seconds, tapping his fingers against the floor and flickering his gaze all over the room. It’s pure nervous habit. Laito hasn’t seen him this worked up in years. Reiji has always been sensitive to stress, but never quite like this. 

“We have to get out of here,” he mutters frantically at one point, talking to himself. Laito’s concern for his brother’s mental state doubles. 

But before long, the guards are back, this time holding what look sickeningly like leashes. Laito squeaks a bit despite himself, scooting back in his cage. He’s done some pretty sick things before, yeah, but this is a whole new level of humiliation. Laito doesn’t think that even he could play this situation off as nothing, no matter how badly he wants to try. 

He’s starting to feel dangerously stretched-thin. 

The guards drag Shuu out of his cage first– literally half dragging him. Shuu gets to his knees eventually, moving at least sort of willingly, even if his expression is pure, sullen fury. He’s smart enough to obey. 

Reiji goes next, much more quickly. His face is twisted up like he very badly wants to say something cruel, but knows that it will only get him in trouble. Even on his hands and knees, his posture is perfect; possibly the only thing he has left that he can control, that he can take pride in. 

Laito moves very easily when the guards hook a leash onto his collar. He really, really doesn’t want to find out what will happen if he doesn’t. 

The three of them are moved to another room, this one bigger and cleaner, with a few open, high windows. They’re caged again, the three of them in a row; Shuu, Laito, then Reiji. The ground is a bit cleaner, and Laito all but sags in relief. Sitting in all the grime before was making his skin crawl, making his whole body feel irritatingly filthy. 

Once they’re all settled, one guard passes around a small pot, instructing the three of them that they can relieve themselves now, or deal with what happens later. Laito’s chest tightens with shame at the idea, but… he wants to finds out what ‘later’ means even less. Shuu also takes the offer, acting deceptively unbothered. Laito doesn’t know at this point if he’s faking, or actually clocking out from reality a bit. He’s not sure he wants to. 

“I will  _ not. _ ” Reiji hisses, sounding horrified. “That’s… that’s terribly improper.” His eyes are almost comically wide, nose scrunched up. 

The guard just laughs, taking the little pot away without another word. 

After a while, people start coming in. Laito overhears a guard talking, commenting with boredom that he hopes one of the good ones will be bought this time. Laito has a good idea of what he’s talking about, and every new implication that brings is a new level of horrifying. 

There are only a couple of people, all well dressed, older adults who look at the three of them like they’re thinking about what meant to buy for dinner, staring openly at the three of them, huddled low in their cages. 

It’s creepy. It’s  _ beyond  _ creepy. Laito has spent years preying on human girls, laughing at their fear when they realize that they’re nothing but victims. This is the first time in his life he thinks he might understand what it’s like to be on the other side of that equation. At least, it’s the first time since something that Laito is absolutely not going to let himself think about.

What feels like hours pass, the three of them left with nothing to do but sit in their cages and let the humans stare at them. The gaps between guests are long, and after a while, Laito starts to notice Reiji acting strange. 

His brother his tensed up even more than earlier, eyes flickering rapidly around the room like he’s looking for something. His finger tapping has escalated, now a steady rhythm in the quiet of the room. Laito makes a good guess as to what’s happening pretty quickly. For all he tries to be the depraved one of the family, at this point, even he’s starting to feel a bit like he should be looking away, at least to spare Reiji even a bit of dignity. 

Reiji starts shaking a few minutes later, eyes fixed on Shuu like he’s praying that the older stays asleep, or at least pretending to be. Laito feels a bit like snapping at him to just start begging and hope the guards take pity on him. At this point, he doesn’t know if it would do Reiji any good. 

It’s stupid. Reiji trying so hard to keep his dignity is downright stupid. Laito knows what helplessness feels like, and Reiji is only hurting himself more by trying to act like he’s above the situation they’re in. 

There’s a sound dangerously close to a whimper, and a moment later, a puddle of wetness starts to spread under where Reiji sits. 

Reiji’s expression is one of utter horror, eyes snapping shut like if he keeps them closed none of this will be happening. His hands are shaking violently, a visibly wet patch spreading down his tattered pants. 

Things don’t seem like they could get worse until one of the guards notices. “Hey, that one pissed itself!” he yells, and every head in the room turns. Even Shuu cracks open his eyes, glancing briefly at his brother. Reiji has now progressed to shuddering all over, face a painful red. 

One of the guards drags Reiji out of his cage, ignoring the pathetic little squeak that leaves him when he’s pulled through his mess. The guard sighs, smacking Reiji’s head and  _ scolding  _ him for making trouble for the rest of them. Reiji’s face goes impossibly more red. Laito almost thinks he looks close to tears. The guard pulls Reiji over to the far side of the room by a hand around his collar, and takes a familiar hose off the wall. 

The guard tugs the soaked mess of Reiji’s pants off fast enough that he doesn’t have time to struggle. Reiji’s eyes go very, very wide. A second later, the hose is on him all over again. Laito comes close to wincing in sympathy. Reiji is hosed off quickly and mechanically, like the guard doesn’t care about what he’s doing beyond cleaning up. When the hose is finally turned off, Laito notices that Reiji has started to sob, dry little heaves of pure humiliation shaking his chest and making his shoulders tremble. 

Reiji is roughly shoved into the cage on the other side of Shuu. The guard doesn’t bother to give him his pants back. Reiji huddles on the concrete, curled in over whatever bare parts of himself he can hide. 

He’s shaking hard, whether from cold or shame or  _ both  _ Laito doesn’t know. He never would have imagined that his stern, perfect brother could be brought so low. There’s a sick sense of horror in his gut at the thought that it could have just as easily be one of them. Could have been  _ him.  _

A few minutes later, another human enters the room. Of course they’re not giving Reiji the dignity of pausing the visits, Laito thinks almost hysterically. They’re being treated like animals, like livestock. 

Nothing’s even happened to him yet and he feels close to tears, terror closing down on his chest that something is going to go wrong. 

This person is an older woman, dressed in rich clothes and a haughty expression. She’s attractive in a mature sort of way, and Laito thinks that if the situation was any different, he would have tried to charm her. 

Instead, the woman walks past their cages, staring at the three of them like pieces of meat. Reiji outright  _ flinches  _ when her gaze falls on him, curling in on himself impossibly more. Shuu doesn’t move, doesn’t so much as look at her, just sits, still and impassive, like nothing anyone can do can hurt him. It’s a defensive act, obviously, but Laito is still vaguely impressed. 

Finally, the woman pauses in front of Laito’s cage, looking down at him with an interest that Laito is very familiar with. She stands there for a bit, staring, and Laito stares back, eyes lidded. He’s involuntarily slipping into an old routine, some sort of coping mechanism kicking in and starting up a familiar pattern. It won’t get him anywhere like this, Laito knows, but acting even something like his usual self still feels safer than letting his fear shine through. At the very least, he’ll know what to do. 

The woman calls a guard over after a moment, then begins a series of questions about Laito’s history and physical characteristics. She asks height, weight, and then slips into things that make Laito’s stomach sink. 

“Has he been used before? Any previous owners?” she asks, as casual as if she was inquiring about the weather. The guard informs her, almost medically, that whatever body Laito is in has been rented out previously, but is clean and suffers no permanent injuries. 

It’s at that moment that Laito realizes that this isn’t  _ him.  _ Whatever the guard is saying, it hasn’t happened to him. It clicks, suddenly, why he feels so much weaker, so much smaller than before. Why his brothers have subtle differences that stand out like neon signs. They’re not in their bodies. They’ve–, they have to have switched with  _ something.  _ A sense of panic curls around Laito’s lungs like ice, driving into his insides with razor-blade spikes. 

As Laito is struggling to figure out why,  _ how  _ such a switch could have happened, the woman asks for him to be taken out of his cage. 

The same guard unlatches the door, and Laito crawls out easily. He doesn’t want to find out what would happen if he didn’t. The woman kneels down next to him, still eyeing him like he’s going to be her next meal. Laito, for all he’s done to his own victims, is not used to being on the receiving end of that kind of gaze. 

The woman starts out by running a hand through his hair, more inspecting than petting. She lifts his chin, tilting his face this way and that, then presses at his jaw like she wants him to open his mouth.

Laito complies, feeling distinctly objectified. He can feel Shuu and Reiji’s eyes on him, and even though he’s definitely been through weirder, there’s something highly unpleasant about the way he’s being examined. 

Even so, he opens his mouth. The guards are still watching, and even though Laito’s skin is starting to crawl, body itself wishing that he could squirm away and just go back into his cage, he doesn’t move. The woman lifts his upper lip, peering at his fangs with a look of mild interest. 

“Hasn’t been defanged, hm?” she asks, and Laito’s stomach drops. That’s a terrifying prospect that hadn’t even  _ occurred  _ to him yet. 

The woman then slips two fingers into his mouth, sliding them against his tongue. She all but finger-fucks his mouth, pressing back far enough to make Laito gag. It’s violating. It’s creepy in a way that Laito hasn’t had to deal with since a long time ago. He’s suddenly starting to wonder if the girls he did these things to ever felt quite as helpless as he does now. 

After poking around at him a bit more, testing the bend of his arms and the line of his spine, the woman asks one of the guards if she can see, as she so horrifyingly puts it, ‘the full package’. 

A second later, the thin pants that had been the only piece of protection Laito had left are gone. The air in the room is frigid against sensitive skin, and even though this kind of thing normally wouldn’t faze him, Laito curls in on himself a bit, feeling sickeningly vulnerable.

He’s just starting to hope that all she wanted was to look, when a cold hand closes around his dick. A shudder, the exact  _ opposite  _ of arousal, runs through Laito like electricity. The woman gropes at him, a look of amusement on her face, and Laito has never wanted a woman’s hand on him less. His shaking intensifies. The guards aren’t even reacting. He can draw the conclusion quickly enough that this isn’t unusual. 

The woman gives his balls a testing squeeze, just hard enough that Laito winces, thighs trying to snap closed. He’s never felt on display like this, like nothing more than a piece of flesh for someone to toy with. Even–, even  _ then,  _ it wasn’t like this. He thinks, for a second, that he might be sick. 

And then two dry fingers force their way inside of him. 

Laito  _ shrieks  _ at that, pain burning up his nerves. It takes every bit of willpower he has not to struggle away. If he makes this woman angry, he’s not sure that he’d make it out alive, or at least in one piece. 

“Hey, knock that off. Unless you’re gonna buy it, quit messing with the merchandise,” one of the guards snaps, and mercifully, the fingers retreat. 

A small argument follows, but Laito barely hears it. He’s unceremoniously stuffed back into his cage, shaking so hard he can barely breathe, scrambling to the back of the cage as soon as the door snaps shut. Even  _ she  _ never did that. Even  _ she  _ never went that far to violate him while he was helpless and afraid, on display for a whole room and–, and–

Laito chokes, gagging on nothing. He feels like he’s going to be sick. His brothers  _ saw  _ that. For so long, he’s tried to keep these vulnerable parts of himself secret, but he can’t stop shaking, too many people are staring, his eyes are going hot, and there’s nowhere for him to  _ hide.  _

As soon as the argument with the guards has calmed down, the woman moves back to Shuu’s cage, staring at him with the same disturbing intensity. Laito stays very, very still, trying to will his usual facade back into place. Every part of him feels much too exposed. The woman, thankfully, doesn’t appear to be taking a second look at him. She must have gotten bored with him already. Instead, she orders Shuu out of his cage next. 

When the guard opens the cage door, Shuu doesn’t move. He lies so still that he almost looks asleep, blue eyes slitted and staring up at the woman. Even when a guard goes it and lightly kicks him, he doesn’t budge. 

“Lazy, isn’t it?” the woman asks, crooking a brow. From his cage, Reiji glares viciously, as if willing Shuu not to make things worse for all of them. 

“Fuck off,” Shuu mutters, just loudly enough for the woman to hear. 

Laito has never particularly thought of Shuu as stupid, but in that moment, he’s certain that his brother doesn’t have the slightest sense of self-preservation. Forget lazy, he must have some kind of death wish. 

She leaves soon after, ignoring the guards’ apologies and loudly complaining that the blonde one was much too lazy to buy, much too rude to be worth her money. As soon as she’s out of the room, heels clicking on the concrete, all one of the guards directs his attention to Shuu. 

The guard still in Shuu’s cage gives him a vicious kick to the ribs, hard enough that a punched-out little gasp leaves him. 

“And here you could have found a home,” the first guard says, punctuating his words with a sharper kick to the soft part of Shuu’s stomach. “If you want to die here, that’s your problem, but we can’t have you mouthing off to customers like that.”

Things get bloodier from there. The guard kicks at Shuu’s stomach and chest with steel-toed boots enough times that Laito can see the bruises already. He gets Shuu in the nose once, leaving a bloody smear along his boot like an afterthought. He keeps going until Shuu’s skin is red and purple, and his quiet noises escalate to miserable little yelps of pain. 

He keeps going until Shuu is breathing hard, eyes scrunched shut and face covered in streaks of his own blood. A few of the kick wounds have even burst open, the sharp edges of the guard’s boot breaking skin. 

Finally, just as Laito is starting to think that it’s going to be over, he steps on Shuu’s wrist, curled close to his body, hard enough that that the sickening snap of bone is audible even from Laito’s cage. The guards leave shortly after that, when the first one is done, locking the main door and loudly discussing their afternoon break, now that the day’s viewing is done. 

Beside Laito, Reiji’s eyes are painfully wide. He’s still shaking from cold and shame, cheeks still streaked with tear tracks, and Laito has never seen him looked so wrecked. Reiji hasn’t said anything yet, just laid bare and trembling in his cage like he can preserve what little scraps of dignity he has left if he doesn’t bring anything worse upon himself. 

The way he looks at Shuu is with a muted sort of horror, not the disdain that Laito was somehow expecting. Perhaps, he thinks, Reiji’s hatred for his brother is more complicated than he’s been letting on. 

Shuu himself is a bloody, crumpled mess. His wrist is bent at an odd angle, pain etched onto his features with every breath. He’s shaking too, eyes closed. The bruises dotting his chest and back are going a deep purple already, some of them tinged blue and black. It’s not hard to imagine that this is the most physical pain he’s been in in a very long time. 

“What… are you staring at…?” he heaves eventually, voice strained and low. Reiji outright flinches at the sound, eyes narrowing. 

“Why did you do that?” Laito asks, hating how scared he sounds, even to his own ears, dangerously close to vulnerable. “You can’t tell me you didn’t know they’d make you suffer for talking to her like that.”

Shuu sighs. “If I got… ‘bought’, or whatever… Do you really think I’d ever get back here? There’d be no chance of going home. I don’t want to be some old hag’s  _ pet,  _ either. Better this than what happened to you.” A cold wash of fear sinks into Laito’s lungs like he’s drowning. “What do you think would have happened if they hadn’t called her off of you?”

“We don’t have to talk about that,” Laito bites back, trying (failing) to sound intimidating. He feels like he doesn’t have any fight left in him, just terror and dread. He can’t remember ever feeling quite so afraid. 

“Fine, whatever… Reiji, you alive?” Shuu continues, talking over Laito like he doesn’t exist. Reiji jolts once, eye visibly twitching. 

“I don’t need any condescending words from you,” Reiji replies, audibly struggling to sound angry. Instead, he just sounds defeated and scared, like all of them feel. None of them have any fight left. 

Silence falls after that, no one quite knowing what to say. This kind of situation is nothing like their previous squabbles, so far beyond petty arguments that the usual insults are quickly falling flat. Laito doesn’t know whether to be grateful that they’re at least sort of cooperating, or horrified that they’ve already been broken so far. 


	3. [03] Feeling everything that’s here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Half way done! :D I will warn, though, that the next chapter is a real mess. It's going to be 12,000 words of pure misery, and I'm going to make it _hurt_. Enjoy the fluff while it lasts XD There aren't really warnings for this chapter besides that everyone is extremely fucked-up. Oh, and Laito basically offers himself for sex, but that should be no shock by now. Have fun reading!

Yui does indeed come back. Reiji thinks that whatever heart he has comes close to bursting when she does. He’s so scared he can feel it in his veins, shaking him from the inside out. It would be so easy to ruin this. It would be so easy to get thrown out and forgotten for good. 

But all Yui does is smile, something fragile in her eyes. She sits down again and talks to the six of them, either not noticing how they’re all trembling at her closeness, or kindly, so kindly ignoring it. 

She’s  _ sweet. _ Reiji can all but smell it from where she sits. Her hands are so small. Her face almost glows, and Reiji never, never imagined that he might have an owner like this. For years, he’s pictured an older human with a stern voice and strict orders, shaping his life into their ideal, telling him exactly what he’s supposed to do in order to be good for them. Yui is smaller and softer than that, so much so. Every part of her is a subdued, blush-like, flower-petal pink, and it’s not anything he knows how to respond to. 

At one point, Yui reaches out to Subaru, when he starts making a face like he’s in pain. When he flinches, Yui draws her hand back instantly. 

Reiji swallows hard. No one has ever paid this much direct attention to any of them. Perhaps she’s looking for mistakes. Perhaps, when she finds them, this dream-like day will come crashing down. He shakes a bit harder thinking about it, thinking that there will be nothing he can do to stop it. 

Yui instructs them that they’re to stay on the first floor unless she takes them somewhere else. She sounds almost nervous when she says it. She wants to be able to keep track of them, she explains.

Reiji nods sharply, making sure to sit up perfectly straight. He’s so nervous he feels almost sick, determined not to ruin this. 

And then Yui leaves them on their own again, with only the instructions that they’re supposed to make themselves comfortable. Some time passes. His brothers slowly leave the living room, muttering stupid things amongst themselves. Reiji stays exactly where Yui left him, waiting for her to come back. He’s good. He can follow directions perfectly. 

He can’t imagine anything more comfortable than obeying his owner’s commands to the letter, than staying permanently in her good graces. 

He sits there for a while. He’s not sure how long. Even Subaru has wandered off at some point, probably trying to find a place to hide. Reiji sits perfectly still until his back begins to ache, protesting the lack of movement. 

At some point, Yui slips back into the room. She gives a tense little sigh, then sees him, jolting a bit. Reiji comes close to flinching. He’s messing it up  _ already.  _ But Yui doesn’t scold him or complain, she just sits down in front of him again, smiling happy-sad in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“So you stayed here, Reiji?” she asks, looking right at him in a way that makes Reiji’s stomach do a funny little twist. Probably nerves. 

His words feel stuck in his throat. Nodding is the most he can do. 

“You look… Um, you look sort of nervous,” Yui says, pressing just gently enough that the panic in Reiji’s chest surges twofold. “If you’d like to, you can come with me. I’m just going to be checking on everyone, and if it makes you feel better, you can follow me around for a bit.”

He can’t talk. There’s no way any words are going to get out past an offer like that. Whatever he did right, Reiji wishes he could do it a thousand times again. He nods, frantically, fingers curling against the wooden floor. 

“Okay, good.” Yui smiles at him, soft, nervous. She stands back up, walking slowly enough that Reiji can easily keep up. She keeps talking, explaining that she just wants to make sure that everyone is doing alright, since all of this is so new to her. Reiji thinks that Yui might be the most considerate human in the world, at least the most so he’s ever met. 

Reiji keeps his posture straight, following exactly a foot behind Yui’s slow stride. He’s going to get this right. He’s going to be  _ perfect.  _

Yui takes him through a couple hallways, still talking to him so sweetly about whatever comes to mind. Eventually, after peeking her head inside every room she comes across, she finds one of his brothers. 

Shuu is curled up on a plush-looking rug, back pressed up against a couch in what looks like a small, comfortable study. He looks strange in the dangerously human clothes, shoulders broader than Reiji remembers. A spike of fury runs through him– that Shuu could be sleeping when Yui is so close, sleeping instead of working to prove himself to their new owner. 

But Yui doesn’t get angry. She doesn’t storm over to Shuu and kick him awake, doesn’t try to punish him for taking advantage of her kindness. 

Instead, she walks very softly over to him, quietly shushing Reiji before he can say anything. She kneels down next to Shuu, smiling almost fondly. Shuu’s eyes twitch in his sleep, some unknown dream pinching his brows together. Yui’s face does something strange, like she’s looking at something very familiar. Her hand clutches loosely at the hem of her shirt. 

Reiji sits where Yui left him, being so, so good. He can follow a simple order. He can be quiet. Even when Yui’s shaky little hand reaches out and brushes through Shuu’s bangs, half-petting, he can be good. 

None of this is  _ fair.  _

Yui keeps petting Shuu, spending a painfully long minute just combing her fingers through his hair. It’s the kindest Reiji has ever seen a human act, the kindest a human has ever been to one of them. Yui’s expression is dangerously fond, and a hot burst of jealousy sparks through Reiji’s veins. 

A desperate little part of him wishes that that could be him, basking in his owner’s affection. He’s not sure what he could do to earn it. 

Shuu is probably awake by now. He’s the heaviest sleeper of the lot of them, but even this is enough to wake him. The thought of Shuu being awake to feel Yui’s hands in his hair is the worst part of this yet. 

But all Shuu does is lay there, deceptively still. His breath is heavy in his chest, a steady rise and fall that’s more calm than Reiji can ever remember seeing. Slowly, slowly, his body starts to uncurl, easing itself out of the tight little knot of fear he’d been twisted up in. 

Yui only spends about a minute petting him, but it’s more than long enough. Reiji is so jealous he can feel it in his throat, choking him with the vicious desire to have Shuu’s place. Whatever he did to earn that, whatever he did to get to have their owner treat him like something precious, Reiji thinks he would do anything to have the chance to earn it for himself. 

She stands up again eventually, slipping quietly back over to the door and guiding Reiji back outside. “Thank goodness,” she says, so quietly, “I’m glad that he’s doing alright… Are you okay with coming with me to find everyone else?” Jealousy burns hot in Reiji’s chest, flickering like a flame. 

He nods before he can think to do anything else. 

“Ah, I have an idea!” Yui suddenly smiles. “Um, Reiji, do you know how to cook?” Instantly, the sick feeling in his stomach lights up. 

Yes, finally, something he can do right. He’s been trained to be a house pet, he knows how to do at least basic chores, and that’s  _ sure  _ to make a good impression. If he can do this right, maybe it’ll be enough. 

And it goes well, somehow. Even though it makes him feel a little dizzy to do it, Reiji stands up, even as he hates how he towers over Yui when he does so. He obeys her every order, just like he should, and somehow, nothing goes horribly wrong. The end result is a small pile of seasoned dumplings, stuffed with octopus and brushed with sauce. It feels right to be making himself useful. It feels like he’s finally doing something good.

Yui passes him one of the dumplings to try, smiling around her own mouthful, and whatever heart Reiji has has wrapped itself around his throat. The food is hot and salty on his tongue, more flavor in one bite than he’s ever been allowed. Yui is so kind. Yui is everything he wants to deserve. 

They take the plate back to another, smaller living room, Reiji obediently trailing behind Yui just like he’s supposed to. As soon as he sees Ayato, though, huddled up small and inoffensive underneath a desk, Reiji’s stomach drops. Ayato has always been the one of them to get himself in the most trouble, and Reiji has no doubts that his brother is bound to mess this up for all of them. Silently, dangerously, he begs Yui to leave the room, to leave before this one piece of happiness can be yanked away from them. 

But instead, Yui kneels down once again. Ayato flinches as soon as she gets close, obviously expecting to be hit, but Yui just smiles happy-sad. 

“You don’t have to be scared of me,” she says, voice painfully soft. “I won’t hurt you. You like Takoyaki, right? I brought you some, see? You can have as much as you want.” Yui nudges the plate towards Ayato, just far enough away that he can choose to reach out and take it. 

Ayato’s eyes are blown black with fear, slit pupils widened to something dark and terrified. Reiji wants to scream at him to just  _ obey.  _ If he refuses her, everything will be ruined. Reiji watched the food being made. It’s not poisoned. It’s not spoiled. Even if it was, he’d expect any of them to eat it, even himself. The only other option, the thing that none of them can afford to do, is disobey. They all should know the consequences for that. 

Thankfully, Ayato reaches out. He drags the plate over slowly, wincing visibly at the sound it makes as it scrapes along the wood. His nose twitches, expression twisting into something hesitant. 

The first dumpling to make it to Ayato’s mouth draws a sharp whine from his lips, eyes going huge. He looks over at Yui with nothing short of shock, and Reiji knows that he’s in disbelief that he’s allowed to eat something so fresh and warm. Yui’s mouth crooks down, just a bit, but it’s enough. Ayato’s hands start to shake where he holds the plate. 

The rest of the dumplings go down his throat so quickly he barely tastes them. He’s trying to prove that he’s appreciative, that he’s obedient. It’s  _ obvious, _ but all Yui does is frown a little more, eyes going sad. 

“Um, tha–, thank you,” Ayato stutters, tongue flicking out to swipe any remaining sauce off of his lips. A second later, reflexively, “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Did they taste good?” Yui’s voice is soothing, but there’s something unhappy in her eyes. Perhaps, Reiji thinks frantically, when she gets angry, she might only get rid of Ayato. She might keep  _ him.  _

“Y-Yeah! It was the best! Best–, best thing ever,” Ayao stutters, nails scraping at the floor. To prove his point, he leans over, licking the crumbs and leftover trails of sauce off the plate, thankfully neat. When he’s done, he slowly, carefully nudges the plate back over towards where Yui sits. 

When he looks up at Yui, Ayato is shaking. He thinks he’s going to be gotten rid of. They all do. Ayato has failed so many times, it’s no small wonder that he’s getting desperate. If Yui throws him out, if Yui throws  _ any  _ of them out, they’ll be done for. There won’t be a second chance if they mess up badly enough to be tossed out on their own. 

But instead of getting angry, all Yui does is look a little sad. She leans over, very slowly, and ruffles a hand through Ayato’s messy hair. 

“Good. I’m glad you liked it. I’ll make more for you any time you want, okay? If you get hungry, please tell me.” Her voice is so, so soft, and Ayato’s mouth slips open with a soft pop. Yui’s fingers scratch at his scalp, and Reiji can see the full-body shudder from where he sits. 

The moment doesn’t last long, but to Ayato, it must feel like forever. Yui drags her fingers through his hair one last time, then stands up, eyes still very close to sad. Ayato looks up after her like he wishes desperately she’d stay, then slides himself further under the desk a second later. 

Good, Reiji thinks, he’s being good. Obedient and quiet, out of the way and not demanding anything more than Yui is willing to give. 

With a little whisper that it’s time to leave Ayato alone, Yui guides Reiji out of the room. Reiji can feel his brother’s frantic gaze on the two of them as they leave, like he wants to scurry after them, but knows better. 

They don’t make it five feet out of the room before a crash sounds from somewhere down the hall. 

Yui jolts, hard. Reiji flinches just as badly, half-expecting to get kicked. 

“Um… we should go check on that,” Yui mumbles, sounding nervous. Reiji nods, obedient as ever, struggling not to show any kind of distress. He doesn’t need to mess things up now, not when everything’s been going well. 

Down the hall, in a small, dark closet, there’s a pile of glass on the floor. A vase, probably stored on a higher shelf, is shattered on the ground, colorful shards scattered across the wood. Against the far wall, trying to hide in a gap between stacked boxes, is Subaru. He’s shaking so hard it’s visible, eyes showing more white than red. As soon as Yui looks at him, the noise that leaves him can only be described as a yelp, body curling in. 

“Are you okay?” Yui asks, so softly, not daring to kneel down in the glass. Subaru just shakes harder, eyes squeezing tightly closed as he tries to make himself very, very small. “What happened? Did anything hit you?” 

“S-Sorry!” he yelps, eventually, breathing hard. “I’m–, it’s–, I didn’t  _ try  _ to do it!” Subaru’s voice is rough and frantic, sounding close to tears. 

“It’s alright. I know,” Yui soothes, looking like she wants to step towards him. “Could you please come over here so I can see you better, Subaru? Carefully. I don’t want you to get hurt or anything.”

Immediately, Subaru pries himself out of his corner. His limbs can barely hold him up, and he almost collapses once trying to get himself uncurled, but he scurries forwards just as quickly, crawling right through the glass to kneel in front of Yui, head bowed in the picture of submission. 

Instead of being happy, though, Yui’s breath goes sharp. He  _ disobeyed,  _ Reiji thinks. He wasn’t supposed to let himself get hurt. He was in such hurry that he ignored one part of the order. 

Subaru seems to notice just as quickly, and his trembles turn into downright shudders, breath coming triple-time in his chest. From Reiji’s angle, he can see the tears spill over. It’s no wonder. Being scheduled to be put down for so long has done a number on his brother’s psyche. Of course he’d be afraid of losing this one last chance at a home. 

“I’ll heal!” Subaru yelps. “Vampires heal quickly; I won’t e-even, even scar. I wo–, won’t disobey ag-again, I won’t–, s-s-so please don’t get rid of me.” Barely able to sit up, the words spill out of Subaru’s throat so broken that they can barely be understood. He bites down on his lip hard, a thin stream of blood bubbling up as he forces himself to quit rambling. 

Yui’s brows pinch together, and Reiji forces himself to keep breathing. She’s seeing what a failure they can be. Every one of them has done nothing but keep messing up, and Reiji is so, so sure that the last straw is coming. It’s just a matter of when Yui gets fed up with dealing with them. 

“Okay,” Yui starts, taking a breath. “Let’s try to calm down. I’m not mad at you, Subaru. I’m not going to be mad. I won’t be getting rid of anyone. It’s alright.” She sits down, taking Subaru’s hand in hers. 

Her thumb brushes over Subaru’s knuckles, against old scars and the poorly healed bone underneath. The sound that leaves Subaru’s throat is desperation incarnate, terror blended with whatever will he has left to be good. Yui gives his hand a little squeeze, hand so small against his. 

If there could be any more jealousy in him, Reiji thinks he’s feeling it. This is unfair on every level. Subaru broke Yui’s things, disobeyed a direct order, and she’s  _ still  _ treating him like she intends to forgive it all. 

Whatever part of Reiji thinks that he could ever deserve it wishes that it was his hand Yui was holding, him that his owner was treating so kindly. 

Yui sits there, stroking her thumb over Subaru’s hand and whispering low words that Reiji can’t make out. Subaru slowly goes from panic to a numb sort of terror, fangs finally sliding out of his lip. His posture drops, lowering himself to the ground by Yui’s knees slowly, with as much grace as his panicked body can muster. Reiji knows that Subaru would practically try to lick her shoes if he got the chance. After how benevolent Yui has been, there wouldn’t be a one of them who wouldn’t do the same. 

“Do you want to stay here?” Yui asks when Subaru is approaching something close to calm. “I can bring you some blankets later, if the small space makes you feel safer. We’ll get the glass cleaned up, and it’ll be fine.”

Subaru nods frantically, hand unconsciously squeezing at Yui’s. 

“Y-Yes. Um, thank you.” He curls in on himself a little more. Just like before, with Shuu and Ayato, Yui brushes a hand through his hair. 

“It’ll be okay, Subaru. I won’t get rid of you.”

Yui digs a broom and dustpan out of the mess of supplies in one corner, and gets as much of the glass cleaned up as she can. Even though she tells Subaru and him to stay off to the side, Reiji can’t help but feel like he should be doing something to help her. It’s not right to be so useless. 

Subaru settles back into the far corner when Yui is done. She even rearranges a few boxes, making something of a little cave for him.

It’s unfair on every measure. Subaru does everything wrong, fails at every turn, and Yui still treats him like he deserves her kindness. 

They leave Subaru where he is, curled up small and scared in between the boxes. Jealousy thrums through Reiji’s veins like a heartbeat. Whatever parts of him haven’t yet given up on being wanted are screaming– why,  _ why  _ is he not the one who deserves to be smiled upon?

Yui collapses into a chair in the first living room, body all but going limp. She sighs, once, long and drawn out, then buries her face in her hands and starts to sob. Panic lances through Reiji’s chest like a knife. 

He knew it. He  _ knew  _ it. She’s sick of all of them, they’ve messed up too many times, she’s unhappy and displeased and they’re all going to be thrown out as soon as she finds the heart to do it. Reiji’s hands are shaking before he can contain himself, a steady twitch setting in under his eye. He’s so afraid he thinks he might be sick. He can picture it now; heaving up what little remains in his stomach on the floor in front of her, giving Yui all the more reason to hate him, all on his own. 

Fighting desperately to control himself, Reiji slowly crawls over to Yui’s feet. They’ve all seen the depictions of good pets who lay at their owners’ ankles, still and quiet and good, proving their obedience while waiting for a command. The question now; does he dare to do it?

Yui’s sobs have turned into low, soft squeaks. She sounds like she’s breaking. She sounds nothing like an owner even should. 

Reiji slides himself closer, feeling like he might break. He has to be good. He has to do  _ something  _ to prevent being thrown away. Ever so gently, he slips in beside Yui’s feet, carefully wrapping his fingers around one skinny ankle in a way that he can’t deny isn’t disgustingly self-indulgent. 

He tries not to think about how badly he’s wanted this. 

At the touch, Yui freezes. She moves her hands away from her face, looking down at Reiji with huge, red-rimmed eyes. For all he’s lived through, here’s never been a terror like knowing just how close happiness could be.

Swallowing hard, Reiji ducks his head, letting his forehead drop against Yui’s knee. He’s so scared. He’s so scared that holding himself together for even a second longer is impossible. Even if she throws him out then and there, at least he can have this one, selfish moment of pretending that he could be  _ good.  _ It won’t last. It’ll never last. He’ll have this and nothing more, and maybe, she’ll let him be put down instead of having to live knowing that this perfect bliss was always just out of reach.

And then, there’s a hand in his hair. Yui’s soft, warm little fingers brush through his bangs like they belong there, carding the hair out of his face. Reiji’s breath catches in his chest so hard he thinks he might choke. Yui scritches lightly at his scalp, painfully gentle. 

Something inside of Reiji’s chest snaps. 

He’s crying before he knows it, squeezing at Yui’s little ankle and sobbing like he’s going to break apart. It’s too much. The gentleness feels like it’s picked apart whatever fragile seam was holding him together, leaving all the rotten, desperate parts spilling out for everyone to see. Yui’s soft skin under his hand is the only thing grounding him, the smell of her like flowers filling his lungs with every staggering breath. 

Yui carefully, slowly slides her ankle out of his grip. Reiji  _ shakes.  _ It’s coming. She pulled away. He’ll be hit. He’ll be beaten. He’ll be thrown out on the streets and left to die. His time of pretending to be wanted is over. 

But instead, Yui sinks to his level. A second later, she pulls him into a hug, tugging his larger frame close to her chest. 

Her hand is on his back, the other stroking at the nape of his neck. She pulls, gently– he’d never resist, never,  _ never _ –, and eases Reiji slowly against her, leaning back on the couch and letting him cry. He’s pressed up to her chest. His curled in body is slotted into hers like it belongs there. Reiji sobs like he’s going to fall apart. 

All Yui does is sit there and rub his back, running her warm little fingers over his shirt and letting him cry. Reiji notices, abruptly, that he can hear her heartbeat. For a second, he thinks he’s going to break. 

But time passes. Yui sits there and holds him like he’s something precious. The tears slowly start to ease, fading from wracking sobs into something slow and painful, feeling rather like blood draining from a wound. Yui’s warmth seeps into him little by little, and Reiji feels more and more like he wants to curl into her chest and never pull away. He can’t remember feeling so safe. He wonders if it was the same for his brothers when she touched them, when she stroked her fingers through their hair.

“You’re alright,” she soothes, voice cutting through the silence. “It’s okay, Reiji, you’ll be okay.”

Whatever heart Reiji has feels like it could be splitting in two. 

Half of him wants to lay there and bask in Yui’s warmth as long as she’ll allow. The rational part of him demands that he save what little face he has left, pray that she won’t be too angry with him for the outburst. 

“Don’t be scared, please. You don’t have to move. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. You can stay here as long as you need to.” It’s as if Yui could read his thoughts. Her hands knot into the back of his shirt, holding on like she doesn’t want him to move. Reiji is helpless to obey. 

And somehow, it’s okay. Yui doesn’t yell. She doesn’t rip at his hair or try to hit him. She just lays there, rubbing his back and letting him shake, breathing steady and slow in a rhythm that Reiji can lose himself in. He’s dizzy, shuddering down to his core, sure to fall apart. 

Yui holds on tight enough that he almost feels like he could. 

. . . 

Laito and Kanato find a place to huddle up together. There’s a bedroom on the lower floor, and praying all the while that this will still count as following Yui’s orders, the two of them find a corner to curl up in. 

It’s been years since they were allowed to sleep close together, Laito thinks. When they were young and small, Ayato and the two of them, they cuddled up every night, the comfort of two cool bodies the only thing any of them were allowed. Once they got old enough to be taken away from their dam for good, it really  _ was  _ all that they had. 

But even then, they’d out-aged being allowed to cuddle together like babies, outgrown even that small respite. They’d gotten their own cages soon enough. Sleeping alone had  _ hurt  _ like a missing thing, no squiming, living thing to feel behind him, kicking in its sleep or cuddling up to his back. The loss of that one bit of soft contact had ached as badly as a wound. 

For the first time in forever, Kanato cuddles up to Laito’s chest, all but shaking. It feels like a piece of him coming home. 

Laito remembers a time when he dreamed that the three of them could be adopted together, that they could somehow wind up in the same home. It feels far away, now, that he ever could have had that hope. 

And yet, he’s here now, both brothers safe and sound– even if Ayato did insist on going his own way–, the three of them truly, possibly allowed to share a home. It feels unreal. The strange, protective little instincts that Laito still has in him for his baby brothers are alive again in his chest. If there’s any way they can keep this… he knows he’d give his body, his  _ life  _ over to Yui in a second. She already owns them. 

What more does he have that isn’t already hers?

After Kanato has fallen asleep, after a few precious minutes of seeing his brother’s soft-cheeked face free of pain or fear, the door creaks open. Laito jolts, a shudder running through him. 

The two of them are curled up beside the bed, hidden in the shadow of the thick blankets. Laito knows Yui in a second, from the smell of her alone. Her bare feet pad across the wood, every step making Laito’s breath hitch. He doesn’t know what’s coming next, but surely, the peace is about to be taken away. Humans never allow them to have such a respite. 

“Ah, Laito, Kanato. Good. I was hoping I’d find you soon.”

Yui stops, smiling softly. Laito feels himself start to shake. He can’t trust this. No matter how sweet her voice is, no matter how kind her smile, he knows better by now. There’s nothing so good in this world for them. He notices that Yui is carrying something, a small stuffed bear. Strange, but, not worth questioning. Maybe it’s important to her. 

When she gets no reply, Yui kneels slowly beside the two of them. Laito faintly wishes he could scramble away and get away with it. 

Kanato is still sound asleep. Laito squeezes him closer on some sick little instinct, praying that he won’t have to see his brother cry. 

“Ah, how nice. I don’t think…” Yui starts, some far-away look in her eyes. She pauses just as quickly, shaking her head. “No, never mind. Are you two warm enough here? I can get a blanket for you if you want.”

Laito’s blood runs cold. Why is she offering that? Does she want them to be in her debt, or does she just want to give them comfort in order to take it away. They haven’t done anything to earn that sort of kindness. They haven’t pleased her yet. It  _ has  _ to be some kind of trap.  

“Wh-Whatever you’d like…” Laito says, hesitating. He sort of wishes she’d just get it over with and hurt him, if only so he could know where he stands with her, what he should expect in the future. 

Yui looks at him, some kind of unplaceable sadness in her eyes.

“Is it alright if I touch him?” she asks, gesturing at Kanato. 

Laito nods, feeling sick. He can’t say no. The fact that she’s even asking is a torture in itself. His owner can do whatever they way; making him agree to it is just twisting the knife deeper. He doesn’t want to have to watch his brother suffer, but if it’s what the person he belongs to chooses… then he has no choice in the matter. He’ll just have to sit helplessly by. 

Instead of anything cruel, though, Yui just reaches out and ruffles Kanato’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. He shivers in his sleep, curling in closer to Laito, and Yui’s face does a strange little twist. Her thumb brushes over Kanato’s cheek, impossibly tender. Laito’s throat goes tight. She’s being gentle, not pulling at his hair or causing any pain. However he’s meant to react to this, Laito can’t fathom. 

Finally, Yui nudges at Kanato’s shoulder, still ever-so gentle. His eyes flutter open, nose twitching, and when he catches sight of Yui, every part of him goes tense, a small, desperate squeak escaping him. 

“I have something for you,” Yui says. 

Kanato starts to shake. He’s always struggled with keeping up reality, especially when people start to hurt him. Laito digs his nails into his palms, trying not to show how badly he wants to tug Kanato away and beg to take his place. It’s  _ stupid,  _ he knows it, but his brother shouldn’t have to suffer.

Yui doesn’t hit him. All she does is pass the stuffed bear to him, smiling like she really does intend to do something kind. 

Kanato’s eyes go painfully wide. His fingers sink into the plush body, shaking so hard Laito can see it. Still staring at Yui like he expects the toy to be taken away at any second, he pulls the bear to his chest, impulsively burying his face against it, whining like a dying thing. 

“It’s yours, okay? All yours.” She runs a hand through his hair one more time, seemingly ignoring the way Kanato  _ whimpers.  _ For all he’s been through, Laito feels half like he’s witnessing something far too private. 

A second later, she’s standing, giving Laito one last smile, slipping out of the room just as quietly as she entered. Kanato, clinging to the bear like his life depends on it, is all but sobbing. Whatever they did to earn this, Laito realizes, he can’t let it slip away. He wants to think it’s selfish. He wants to think that what he’s about to do is only for his own benefit, but the way his chest aches when he slowly disentangles himself from Kanto says otherwise. 

Leaving Kanato to sleep on his own, Laito follows Yui out into the hall, sitting carefully at her feet when she pauses, looking down at him. 

“Ah, Laito. What is it?”

“I’ll–,” he chokes, throat feeling tight. “I’ll earn it. Whatever I have to do, I won’t complain. I can be  _ good. _ ” There’s a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, horror at how he’s actually offering himself to be used. 

“Um, what do you mean?” Yui’s eyes are wide, almost confused, and for a second, Laito hates her for making him spell it out. 

Feeling like he might be sick, Laito tugs one edge of his collar down, popping the buttons so that Yui can see his chest. He lets his eyes go lidded, slipping into the familiar routine of offering his body up. Head tilting to the side, he licks his lips, looking up at Yui and half-wishing that he could prove this  _ better,  _ suck her fingers into his mouth and show how good he can be. 

And yet, instead of looking pleased, Yui’s soft little lips contort with something like barely disguised horror. Laito’s stomach drops like a stone. He’s messed up. He hasn’t even done anything yet, and he’s messed up. 

“No, Laito, you d-don’t have to do that. Please, I don’t, I don’t want that kind of thing from you.” Her tone is soothing, but her words feel like knives driving into his chest. She doesn’t want him. He’s only been in her care for a matter of hours, and she’s already outright tell him that he’s worth nothing to her. If she doesn’t want to use him… he’ll be thrown out. 

What else is he  _ good for _ ?

Abruptly, Laito’s gut gives a violent twist. He gags, choking on his own terror, and if there had been anything in his stomach, it would have been on the floor. His body shudders, hard enough to rattle his teeth. 

It’s not  _ fair.  _ He’s trying so hard. He’s offering Yui whatever she wants, but it’s not enough. There’s not a part of him that she wants. She’s refusing to use his body, refusing to let him fulfill his purpose, and unless she intends for him to be good for something else, he’s well and truly doomed. 

There’s nothing he can imagine her wanting him for. He’s too soiled to be a house pet, too delicate to be used for labor. There’s no point in even keeping him if she can find no use for him in her own pleasure. 

There’s a hand on his back, Yui kneeling beside him and rubbing slow circles over his shirt. 

Laito shudders involuntarily at the contact, head spinning. 

Yui murmurs soft, comforting things, reassuring him that she won’t throw him out. Every part of Laito wishes he could believe it. It would be better than a dream if she was serious. If only, if  _ only  _ she’d just take his body so that he could have the slightest fragment of hope. 

They sit like that for a while, Laito slowly calming down. He’s trembling, still feeling absolutely sick, but Yui doesn’t seem to care. At some point, she moves on to rubbing his shoulders, tracing over the nape of his neck with a warm little hand. His skin is one raw nerve, more sensitive to these touches than anything he’s ever felt before. If he could find his breath, he’d try to thank her. At this point, he’d happily kiss her shoes. 

Yui’s shirt has slid down her neck a bit, showing her pale collarbone. Her skin looks soft, unbearably so, but what catches Laito’s eye are the twin dots of scabbed-over blood resting just on the top edge of her chest. 

Those, he realizes, are bite wounds. 


	4. [04] Crushed as the disgust-smeared sun goes down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy. Just... oh boy. This is a mess. It's the last chapter detailing what happens to the canon boys in the Pet Au world, and I'm hoping it's as fucked up to everyone else as I think it is. I tried to make it as much of a nightmare as I could while still staying within my word limit. Which, actually, was the hardest part of writing this. I probably would have made this about 50% longer if it was up to me, but because commission, I had to keep it condensed... >.> Either way, this is long, this is awful, and the boys are _suffering_
> 
> Warnings this time include... a lot. To make a list of the worst ones, gore, unreality, severe mental trauma, torture, abuse, suffering for all involved, implied child abuse, everything to do with the Sakamaki mothers, self harm, mental breakdowns, mutilation, and just plain fucked up everything.

Morning comes, probably. It’s dark inside their caged little room, only a thin window letting in light. Shuu doesn’t particularly want to open his eyes anyway. There’s not much reason to, when he knows what he’ll see. 

He’s laying on his stomach on the concrete of his little cage. Every part of him hurts like he got hit with the fucking limo, every inch of him battered in a way that he’s never had to deal with. It was always Reiji who got beaten when they were kids, and even though this is on a scale completely different, Shuu can’t help but wonder distantly if this is how his brother felt. 

Ribs aching with every breath, broken wrist a steady throb of pain, Shuu lays very still and tries to drown out the sounds of his brothers bickering in the background. Normally, he’s pretty good at that. But  _ normally,  _ he has his music and a comfortable couch, and the fighting voices don’t sound quite so frantic. For all Shuu is used to his family having more issues than he can count, there’s never been a time when they all sounded so much like they’re going to break into a thousand little pieces. 

Shuu shivers. He’s trying very hard to distance himself from this, from the pain settled around his lungs and the panic at the root of his spine, but he’s left with a childish part of himself that just doesn’t want to  _ hurt.  _

So he lays there, pretending like he’s still his usual self, ignoring how the delusional effort makes him feel all the more pathetic. 

Ayato’s shouting raises above the noise. The six of them, including Subaru, had been thrown back into their original cages after the nightmare of yesterday. Shuu can’t imagine that either side was happy to see what had become of the other three. 

Reiji and Laito, naked and damn-near traumatized, Reiji twitching with barely-concealed nerves, and Laito looking dangerously frayed around the edges. Ayato sporting fresh bruises and open cuts, a smear of vomit down his front. Kanato, unable to quit sobbing, a noticeable break in his small nose. Subaru looking like he’d witnessed a war zone, and Shuu himself beaten and bloody, dragging a broken wrist. 

They’re fucking pathetic, all of them. It’s ridiculous that  _ humans  _ could do this, could drag them so far, and yet–

The door to their cage room slams open. 

Shuu barely suppresses a flinch. His brothers’ arguments cut off instantly. Heavy footsteps, probably the man with the hose from their first night here, thud through the room, echoing off the concrete walls. 

They stop in front of Shuu’s little cage, and his stomach drops so fast it’s nauseating. 

Cracking an eye, Shuu looks up. It is the same man. Remembering frigid water beating down on his back, remembering what it felt like to have his wrist stomped on, Shuu shivers on instinct. This isn’t going to be good. 

“You opened your mouth yesterday, didn’t you?” the man asks, flipping open the lock on the door to Shuu’s cage. “I don’t give a fuck if you plan to rot in your cage, but you know what? That was  _ my  _ commission money I missed out on because you fucked it up. The bitch even filed a complaint, so now, you ‘officially’ have to be punished.”

Fuck. Fuck on a thousand levels. The man’s hand goes to Shuu’s collar, dragging him roughly across the floor, uncaring of how his broken wrist is jostled against the hard ground. Shuu fights to move with him, but as tired and weak as he is, it’s a losing battle. He winds up being straight up pulled, drug like dead weight and thrown into a larger, more open cage on the other side of the room. The man steps inside with him, and the door clicks shut with a note of something straight up ominous. 

The man, probably someone in charge, clips a short chain onto Shuu’s collar. He won’t be able to move more than a foot or so without choking himself. A shiver runs down Shuu’s spine, frigid and sharp. 

Then, the man pulls a lighter off his belt. 

Whatever dignity Shuu was trying to hold onto flies out the window in an instant, panic hitting him like a knife to the chest. No. No. No, no,  _ no _ . Shuu scrambles back, pressing himself as tightly against the wall as he can. He can feel his brothers staring, horrified. The man steps towards him, flicking the lighter on, and Shuu feels himself start to beg. 

Smirking, the man crouches down, grabbing Shuu’s good wrist in an iron grip. Whatever pleads were spilling from Shuu’s throat quickly morph into a straight up  _ howl,  _ a mantra of “please, please, please” choked out of him like if he screams enough, the man might have mercy. 

The first touch of fire to his arm is the worst thing Shuu has ever felt. Everything freezes. He watches in near slow-motion as the orange-yellow flame brushes against his skin, and then, the pain hits, the terror blossoms sharp and fast, and Shuu is  _ screaming  _ like he’s going to die, kicking out at the man with everything he has in him. 

All the man does is laugh and trace a slow, burning path against Shuu’s wrist. Shuu’s vision spins, blacks, and behind his eyelids, all he sees is houses burning against a vivid blue sky, smoke burning his lungs. 

It goes on for longer than Shuu can track. He hears himself screaming, distantly, but between the fear and the pain and the sick smell of burning flesh, it’s hard to tell just how long. All he knows is that when there’s a circle of char around his wrist, when every fingertip feels numb and seared, the man finally lets go, unclipping the chain and leaving Shuu to curl up into a wailing ball of pain and utter terror. 

He gets a kick to his side for his trouble, but thankfully, thankfully, the man doesn’t burn him again. Sobs catch in Shuu’s chest like razor-blades. 

“Hey… Shuu…” Ayato’s voice cuts through the silence, the man suddenly long gone. “Say something. C’mon.” He sounds small, scared, and Shuu starts to laugh before he can stop himself. This is sick. They’re going to die here, every one of them. There’s nothing left. 

“Fuck, this is messed up,” Subaru blurts out, summarizing the mood of the room. “Shuu, get up! You’re fine! You’re not this weak, are you?”

“Don’t expect anything from the good-for-nothing,” Reiji hisses, a note of something downright terrified hiding around the edges of the biting words. “He’s so weak, it’s no wonder such a small thing broke him.”

No one responds. It’s pathetically obvious that Reiji is overcompensating. Shuu laughs harder, the sound morphing to sobs. 

Time passes, probably. Shuu stays exactly where the man left him, clutching his wrist and biting his lip so he doesn’t cry out loud. His brothers’ bickering starts up again, this time hushed and even more frantic, Reiji sounding like he wants to crawl into Shuu’s cage and choke him himself. Kanato keeps crying, Laito’s voice takes on a miserable whine, and Ayato won’t shut up no matter who snaps at him. They’re all  _ pathetic.  _

At some point, there are voices outside the room. The argument dies down instantly, no one daring to speak where they could be heard. Outside, Shuu hears guards and unfamiliar voice, all male. 

“Well, let the three of them in,” a guard says, sounding like he’s trying to please someone. “It won’t hurt to have a little visit while you have your discussion with the boss. We’ll keep an eye on them, and you can come get them whenever you’re done. I know your vampires are always well trained.”

Another man laughs, thanking the guard. The door creaks open a moment later. Shuu stays exactly where he is. At this point, he wouldn’t move if they shot him. The rest of them can deal with whatever fucked up, tamed vampires the guards are sending in here. He just wants to lay down and die while there’s no one watching him to mock him for it. 

At least, right up until he hears Reiji  _ choke.  _

Shuu looks up, a sick sort of curiosity driving him. What he sees sucks the air out of his lungs in one sharp instant, nausea crashing down. 

It’s his mother. It’s his  _ mother,  _ there and alive, long, golden hair pooling over her shoulders as she kneels in front of Reiji’s cage with the same perfect posture Shuu remembers. Her hair is loose, she’s wearing the plainest dress Shuu has ever seen her in, and there’s a dead look in her eyes that sends a shiver like nothing Shuu has ever felt down his spine. 

His eyes flicker– a distance away, Christa and Cordelia too, and of all the fucked up things in this world they’ve fallen into, this is the sickest. Shuu sees the matching looks of utter fucking panic on the triplets’ faces, the misery on Subaru’s, and for once, knows just how his brothers feel. 

“Have you been well, Reiji?” Beatrix asks, her voice disturbingly empty. There’s no fight left in her, none of the pride that Shuu always knew his mother for. “Have you been… obedient?”

Reiji makes a face like he’s dying, some awful intensity flickering in his eyes. Shuu has known for a while that Reiji was the one to kill her, back when, that his frustrations finally boiled over into something dangerous. Seeing Beatrix in front of him, alive again… it has to hurt in ways that Reiji never thought would ever be able to hurt him again. 

Reiji chokes, sputters, words failing to come out. He looks like he wants to say something cruel, but the most he can manage is a shaky nod. Beatrix doesn’t react. She just gives him the same, blank gaze, and pads her way over to Shuu, crawling just as low as the six of them had to. 

“Have you been well, Shuu?” she asks, almost robotically. It’s the single creepiest thing Shuu has ever seen. 

“Wh-What…?” He gets more out than Reiji did, but finds his voice equally stuck. Beatrix’s dull blue eyes, a mirror of his own, stare back without the slightest reaction to her son beaten and burned, and Shuu is hit with the horrible realization that this is how they’re going to end up. If they stay here, if this doesn’t end, this is what’s coming. 

“My owner instructed me to check on you. Are you well?” Beatrix tilts her head ever so slightly, the most life Shuu’s seen out of her so far, and he feels half like laughing all over again. The idea of his mother calling anyone her owner feels like some kind of sick joke, not the reality in front of him. 

Because he doesn’t know what else to do, Shuu nods. Beatrix nods back, a bit slower, then crawls back over to the door, patiently waiting for the human that owns her to return. Shuu thinks he might be sick. 

“Oh, Ayato, you’ve gotten so much bigger! So healthy!” 

From the next row of cages, Shuu hears Cordelia coo. She’s leaned in close to Ayato’s cage, a weirdly  _ happy  _ looking smile stretching her lips, pressed as far forward as she can get. Ayato’s eyes are as wide as they can get, his lip quivering as he looks like he’d just as soon crawl through the bars and snap his mother’s neck then and there. He might have done so already. Shuu doesn’t know what those three did to off her back then. 

‘ _ Fuck off, old hag _ ,’ Shuu imagines Ayato wants to say. Like with the two of them, words just don’t come out. Kanato has progressed to straight up sobbing in the cage over, and Laito’s… everything has gone worryingly still. It doesn’t even look like he’s blinking. 

And then, he looks over to Christa and Subaru. Christa, wearing white, her hair a loose braid beside her shoulder, kneels in front of Subaru like a statue. Her eyes are closed, her expression serene. The face that Subaru is making is the exact opposite, every feature set in pure tension. 

“M-Mother…” He croaks, just barely. Christa’s red eyes slide open. One of her hands moves to mess with her braid, fidgeting. 

“You look well,” she mumbles. “No fresh wounds. You must be making progress.” Christa’s tone is some strange mix of soft and sharp, fond, yet cutting. She’s refusing to look at Subaru, just staring faintly into the distance, gaze focused on the far wall. It’s downright disconcerting from where Shuu sits. He can’t imagine how Subaru must feel. 

“Y-Yeah… Have you… have you been alright?” Subaru breathes, somehow playing the part. He can’t bear to upset his mother, even now. Subaru always has been the soft one of the lot of them. 

“I miss you. When they used to let us… It was better.” Something melancholy in Christa’s voice spikes, twists like a knife. Shuu gets the message quickly, and he’s sure Subaru does too. The way they’ve all been shoved into cages together, it’s likely that Christa and her son spent quite a bit of time with each other. Must have been the only comfort they got. 

“I know. I’m sorry. I miss you too. I’m  _ sorry _ .” The stress is obviously getting to Subaru. His voice cracks on the words, something pathetic seeping into his posture, his tone, downright surreal to watch. 

Shuu is only torn away from that disaster when Kanato starts to  _ scream.  _ Cordelia got a little too close to his cage, judging from the way Kanato has himself pressed as far to the back as possible now, curled in on himself and screeching like a man possessed. Cordelia scoots forwards a bit more, asking if he’s okay, and Kanato howls like he’s dying, screaming at her to get away from him, to stay dead, to stay like he left her. 

Shuu has only a second to think that the poor kid really must think he’s having some kind of psychotic break, hallucinating his dead mother in front of him, when the door to their room slams open. The guards enter again, this time accompanied by a new face. 

“Beatrix, Christa, get over here,” the new man snaps, and the two instantly comply. Shuu notes that Reiji hasn’t looked away from their mother yet. “The runt’s quite the crybaby, isn’t he? Never broke it out of him.”

Kanato keeps screaming and screaming, even when a guard kicks him in the side. Eventually, through the noise, one of the guards mentions something about solitary confinement. The other pulls a leash, clips it, starts to  _ drag,  _ and then–, then, Kanato is pulled away, howling all the while. The five of them are left to stare after him. In this situation, it’s almost probable to think that none of them will see him ever again. 

The last guard and the man, probably their former owner, go back to talking, Beatrix and Christa sitting submissively at their heels. Reiji is still staring, eyes all the wider after the Kanato incident, so pale that he looks close to passing out. They’re all falling apart. Even  _ Reiji.  _

Laito is staring off at the door that Kanato was taken through, eyes glassy and wide. Ayato is fidgeting, looking half-panicked, glancing at his mother and back like he expects her to lash out and smack him. Cordelia, while Laito is distracted, slips her slender fingers through the bars of his cage and taps him gently on the shoulder. 

“How have you been, Laito?” she smiles. “I’m sure you know how much I’ve missed you.” 

Shuu sees the exact moment that something in Laito  _ breaks.  _

Laito jerks back, eyes fixed on Cordelia like she’s a demon before him. His fingers dig into his arms, scratching, clawing, sliding up into his hair to pull and pull and  _ pull…  _  and then, he starts to scream. 

If Shuu thought that Kanato sounded terrified, Laito is a thousand times more so. The howls leaving his throat aren’t fear, aren’t panic– they’re the sounds of something inside of him shattering into a thousand pieces. It’s downright disturbing, a sick, nervous feeling setting off in Shuu’s bones in an instant. He’s always known that Laito was a little  _ off,  _ but this–

“Kn-Knock it off!” one of the guards shouts, kicking Laito’s cage. Even he seems unnerved, the slightest hitch in his voice. When nothing happens, to the two who have returned, “Get the muzzle, quick. This one’s losing it.” The other guard scrambles across the room, quickly bringing back metal cuffs and what looks disturbingly at a dog muzzle, all dark leather and metal straps, a long rod of metal settled on the inside. 

Laito still hasn’t quit making those awful, awful noises, blood under his nails where he’s torn himself open in his panic. Even Cordelia has scrambled back to her owner’s heels, looking downright disturbed. 

The guards get inside Laito’s cage. He’s unresponsive, curled in on himself in a tight ball. The two of them have to drag him out of his little knot to get the cuffs on him, tearing them away from clawing into his arms and hooking them behind his back at a rough, uncomfortable angle. 

The muzzle goes next, what turns out to be a  _ bit  _ slid between Laito’s teeth to keep the screams in. He struggles and pleads when they get their hands on him, trying to scramble away. It’s the single most sickening thing Shuu thinks he’s ever seen from his brother. Of everything Laito has done, seeing him  _ break  _ is what sends the darkest chill straight to Shuu’s lungs. 

In his own cage, Ayato looks close to breaking himself. His nails are tightened against the concrete, jaw tensed until every tendon stands out. He looks panicked, seconds away from tears. Across from him, Reiji and Subaru bear matching looks of horror. Laito,  _ Laito  _ of all people, falling apart so quickly, so utterly. They all know the facade Laito keeps up so well; seeing his insides is a nauseating experience for all. Shuu’s burnt hand  _ throbs.  _

Eventually, the guards get Laito restrained. They step out of his cage, apologizing to the mothers’ owner all the while. Shuu tries very, very hard to ignore the muffled howls still slipping out from behind Laito’s muzzle, the way his eyes are blown inky-black, not a sliver of green to be found. 

The conversation between the man and the guards continues, as if nothing happened. Shuu tries to listen for all of a minute before stress makes the world blur at the corners, words turning to mush. 

To the side, Ayato is shaking worse than Shuu has ever seen. He looks like a scared kid all over again, all trembling jaw and curled-tight hands, breath coming short through a painfully thin chest. The triplets have always been close, closer than any of them. Surviving someone like Cordelia probably gets them there. It’s no wonder Ayato’s disturbed. 

There’s a sharp break in the conversation after a bit. The sound rises, falls towards the five of them, and then, in the silence between words, Reiji mutters something under his breath. 

Shuu can  _ feel  _ the air in the room freeze. 

Reiji is the one sitting closest to the men. They could hear him, surely, and whatever came out of his mouth must have been the exact kind of overcompensating arrogance Shuu knows him for. Stupid, maybe, or just a product of the same stress that’s slowly breaking Shuu himself down. 

“You’ve grown an attitude,” the man, the important one says, a crook of a smirk on his lips. “You’re never going to find a home if you keep talking like that. No one would pay for disrespect.”

One of the guards snaps to apologize, clearly trying to save his paycheck. The man just laughs, stepping towards Reiji’s cage with a hand going to his belt-buckle. It takes a second for that to make sense, takes Reiji even a moment beyond that, but the look of pure shock that flickers across his face is too telling. It’s been a while since anyone had the power to beat Reiji, Shuu thinks, throwing a sick glance across the room to his mother. 

Inside the cage, belt in hand, the man grabs Reiji by the hair, yanks him to his knees with a squawk, and force him up against the bars. 

Reiji doesn’t so much as protest, biting his lip to stifle what must be panic, and Shuu  _ knows  _ that they’re breaking. Reiji’s eyes scrunch shut, a shockingly fragile look crossing his face. Even though he knows what’s going to happen, Shuu can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away. 

Keeping a hand in Reiji’s hair, pinning him up against the bars so he can’t wriggle away, the man draws back his hand. The first  _ crack  _ is loud in the room, too loud, snapping against Reiji’s bare thighs, and even though Shuu knows that his brother got used to this kind of treatment years ago, something between the pain and humiliation is surely going to drive a chisel into whatever mended cracks are holding Reiji together.

To his credit, Reiji stays fairly still, only jerking on instinct with each hit that lands. He bites his lip until his fangs leave bloody punctures, clenches his fists against the bars of his cage, but doesn’t do a thing to fight back. Shuu can see in the man’s eyes that this is just a fucking power trip at this point. He’s probably frustrated with the lot of them causing disturbances, or maybe just in the mood to beat something that can’t fight back. Shuu doesn’t know. Shuu doesn’t want to think about it. 

The man keeps going until there’s blood running down Reiji’s thighs, welts opened up. The whole time, all the guards do is chat, ignoring the mess in front of them like it’s normal. For all any of them know, it  _ is.  _

Laito is still unresponsive. For all Shuu knows, he’s not even registering all of this. Subaru is tensed, looking away to afford Reiji at least the slightest bit of dignity. Kind, oddly so, considering Subaru’s usual attitude towards the lot of them. Ayato, meanwhile, can’t tear his eyes away. At this point, it’s horror plain and simple. 

Eventually, the man steps away, letting Reiji crumple. If these were their old bodies, he probably would have been able to keep himself up. Like this, jammed into a weak, half-starved self that’s more bone than muscle, Reiji doesn’t stand a chance. He slides slowly to the ground, fingers catching on the bars, a look of vicious humiliating etched onto his face. It’s impossible to tell if the beating itself is the bad part, or how far he’s fallen. 

The men leave soon after, the mothers trailing obediently after them. Shuu takes one last look at his mother’s face, a pang of something unrecognizable heavy in his chest. When he turns back to Reiji, his brother’s eyes are fixed on her, a wetness to them that Shuu doesn’t want to see. 

They’re left alone, then, the only sounds conversation in the distance and the faint sound of Laito sobbing behind his gag. Shuu thinks, in passing, that his brother might suffocate himself if he keeps that up. 

“What are we going to do…?” Ayato’s the one to break the silence, sounding smaller than Shuu has ever heard him. And then, sickeningly vulnerable, “We’re… we’re gonna get out of here, right?”

“Fuck if I know,” Subaru bites back, curling into himself a bit where he sits. “If this is the old man’s doing, he might drag us back eventually. If not, I guess we’re just screwed. Doesn’t matter either way, though. By that time, we’re all gonna be…” The unspoken ‘ _ fucking broken _ ’ hangs in the air where the four of of them can clearly feel it. “Reiji, you alive?”

“I’m  _ fine, _ ” Reiji hisses. For once in their lives, no one is quite cruel enough to point out how shaky he sounds. 

Shuu allows himself to go limp, still cradling his burnt hand. He sees fire every time he closes his eyes, phantom heat still dancing across his fingertips. He closes his eyes, and shuts out the voices around him. 

. . . 

Kanato is left in the dark for longer than he can track. The guards, the evil, evil humans set on breaking all of them down cuff his wrists, hook his leash to a loop mounted on the wall, and leave him all alone in the smallest, darkest room Kanato’s been in since he had to hide in closets with Ayato. 

And–, and that alone brings back a thousand unwanted memories. She’s alive. In whatever horrible world this is, she’s _alive._ Her eyes, the smell of her, the sound of her voice, all exactly how Kanato remembers in the pitch black parts of himself that hold her remains, buried under what it felt like to watch his mother burn. He had to be hallucinating, Kanato thinks. It _had_ to be. He burned her corpse himself. He laid the final blow. 

But no. His mother is alive and breathing just a few rooms over. She was there. She was just inches away from him, and for all Kanato has always known he can’t trust his own mind, this might be the worst trick its ever played. Of all the things he could hallucinate, it had to be  _ her.  _

But alone in the dark, there’s no one and nothing else to think about. Kanato screams until his throat is raw, sobs until he has no more tears to give, and no one comes for him. By the time he’s reduced to silent weeping, he’s sure that the humans are leaving him in there for good. By the time the walls start moving, he’s not sure if he wants them to take him out. Every time he closes his eyes, Kanato hears  _ her  _ voice, his old nickname, orders for him to sing. Kanato laughs until he can’t hear her over the sound. 

The humans come for him eventually. The first sliver of light draws out an involuntary whine. Thorns bloom around the guards’ feet when they come to take his leash. Fire dances along the walls as they guide him somewhere else. Kanato’s eyes follow the flickers of purple, of red. 

His brothers are all shoved together into a larger, more open room with drains along one wall, thin blankets in a far corner, and storage on the wall opposite of that. They all look so terrified, so small. 

If they’ve fallen that far, Kanato thinks he might look like a walking corpse by now, pretty as a doll. 

When they catch sight of him, their faces go blank, horrified, like they’re seeing a ghost. Kanato watches bugs crawl down the far walls and laughs. They might as well be. They’re all as good as dead here. Every one of them are going to end up just like he is now. 

Kanato is left to sit by himself, rocking slowly. Ayato appears beside him after a moment. Kanato’s not sure he saw him move. 

“Kanato… come on, don’t do this,” Ayato whispers, sounding frantic. There aren’t any humans in the room to hear them, and Ayato is still acting like he’ll be slapped for speaking. Kanato remembers what his brother looks like on his knees, lapping up his own vomit, and laughs harder. 

There’s not much time to talk after that. Before Ayato can get out another plead, the door creaks open. All six of them flinch in sync, a miserable little sound even slipping out or  _ Reiji.  _

But the person to step inside isn’t a guard. No, it’s a familiar face, framed by soft blonde hair. Yui. Yui, in a seafoam-green blouse, denim shorts, and the healthiest smile Kanato has ever seen from her. She’s grinning. For the first time since he’s known her, Yui doesn’t look scared. 

Carrying a decent-sized bag with her, Yui steps into the room, seemingly not noticing how they all flinch. Her body look stronger than Kanato remembers, but that might just be because the one he’s been shoved into is even smaller than before. She smells like flowers and something sweet. There isn’t a single bite mark dotting her skin. 

“Good morning,” Yui smiles. Not a one of them knows how to react. 

Yui steps over to Shuu first. He  _ flinches.  _ Kanato’s oldest brother, probably the strongest in the family, cowering from a tiny human girl. Kanato isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

They’re all expecting to be hit or worse. After everything that’s happened so far, it would barely make sense not to be. The idea of Yui being the one to kick them around carries a certain sense of humiliation that wasn’t there with the guards. Perhaps karma, come back to bite them after everything they’ve done. Kanato’s vision blurs with colors. He almost misses the high wine that slips out of Laito… who, Kanato notices, is muzzled, a wild look in his eyes that sends shivers down Kanato’s spine. 

Whatever happened there, Kanato doesn’t want to know. They’re all broken by now. If Laito has shattered, it doesn’t make a difference. They’ll all be crushed, one way or another. Sooner, rather than later. 

“Hello there. I’m a new volunteer here. All I’m here to do is get you all cleaned up, okay? I won’t do any hurting.” Yui’s voice is soft, almost coddling in a way that makes Kanato shudder. He would have hated that tone just days ago. Now, he wishes he could crawl into it and stay there. 

A volunteer? For  _ what _ ? For all Kanato knows, in this world, she could be nothing more than the next person to hurt them. Worse, it’s obvious that like every other stupid human here, she has power over them. Whatever she’s here to do, even Yui, so long as she’s this one, Kanato knows he can’t trust. This place is a nightmare, and even if a part of him is already leaning towards the familiar presence of someone he could control, Kanato isn’t dumb enough to think that he could trust anyone from this awful place. 

But Yui takes Shuu’s hand– the burnt one– into her lap, then runs her fingers lightly over the damaged skin. Shuu looks like he wants to scramble away and  _ hide.  _ Somehow, he stays still, stays still as Yui takes out a tub of salve, scoops some out onto her fingers, and begins to rub it into the burns. The way Shuu sags with relief is almost nauseating. 

“There we go. Thank you for staying still for me.” Yui is talking to him like a skittish animal, but when she brushes her soft little fingers over the back of Shuu’s hand once more, all of them can see the way he melts. 

When Yui moves on to Reiji, it’s… disconcerting. Reiji, sporting lines that look like they were left by a whip,  _ ducks.  _ He all but bows, refusing to look Yui in the eye. In his own, there’s a scared look that Kanato doesn’t want to think about. It’s childish, frightened in a way that someone like Reiji should never be, raw enough that it feels like it shouldn’t be seen. 

Yui gets a different little tube– antiseptic, perhaps. She kneels beside Reiji, runs a comforting hand through his hair. Reiji starts shaking, and Kanato feels his tears start up again. This is wrong on every level. He shouldn’t have to see his brother acting so pathetic.

When Yui works the salve into Reiji’s back, she’s painfully gentle. It looks more like a back rub than plainly medical. It looks like it feels good. Kanato’s nerves prickle just watching it, stomach doing a twist. It’s only been a few  _ days.  _

The look of shame in Reiji’s eyes when Yui is finished is visible. The desire to cling to her and beg for more is even more so. It’s too much to look at, too close to the conflict filling Kanato’s chest. 

All of them are staring. Shuu is looking at Yui like he could start begging too, clutching his burnt hand to his chest, fingers slotted over where hers had touched. Ayato looks like he wants to scream, or maybe burst into tears. The frustrated set of his mouth gives him away. It’s an internal battle of dignity and shame versus the sick longing they’ve all developed. Laito’s eyes aren’t focusing. He’s staring a point somewhere past Yui, expression unreadable behind the muzzle. He’s wringing his hands in his lap, though, obviously, painfully nervous. And Subaru. Subaru is  _ shaking.  _ He can barely look at Yui, at Reiji, most likely knowing it could happen to him as well. 

The next thing Yui moves on to is the drains, what looks like shower heads hanging on the other side of the room. When the water turns on with a hiss, Kanato abruptly realizes he’s filthy. Watching the way the floor swirls when his eyes stay open too long, he’s not surprised that he doesn’t care. 

Yui calls Subaru over. He winces almost pitifully. 

“Can I get you cleaned up?” she asks, tucking a section of Subaru’s hair behind his ear. Subaru nods almost mechanically, not daring to speak. 

The spray must be  _ warm.  _ Subaru melts into it as soon as the water hits his back, still kneeling on all fours. Vampires get cold easily, and even if they learn not to notice it, heat is always a pleasant shock. Like this, it must feel like heaven. Yui guides the spray over his back, his shoulders, carefully wiping off any stubborn blood and grime with a cloth pulled from her belt. 

When she gets to his hair, the noise that comes out of Subaru is so far beyond pathetic that Kanato can’t help but close his eyes. They’re breaking. It’s  _ Yui.  _ It’s her, their prey, and they’re all staring at her like she’s an angel sent to save them. Kanato feels a sob hitch through his chest, and can’t deny for anything that he wishes it was him next to her. It probably will be, soon. The way that comfort settles over him makes Kanato want to cry. 

After that, things go blurry, whatever hallucinations have settled over him tearing Kanato’s attention away from the world. He’s pretty sure that Yui is cleaning the rest of them up; Shuu, Reiji, Laito. Clarity breaks for long enough that Kanato can see Laito crying at his turn, when Yui removes the muzzle. He’s shaking viciously, eyes wild and blown black. 

The longer the contact goes on, the longer Yui’s hands are on Laito’s skin, the more unhinged he starts to look. There’s nothing sexual about it, and that must throw Laito off guard almost as much as the position itself. He’s helpless, and that kind of thing has never sat well with Laito’s personal brand of issues. The look in his eyes is half-wrecked, like he’s caught between scrambling away and screaming until everything goes back to normal, or curling into Yui and soaking up the kindness. 

And then, after the world blurs one more time, it’s Kanato’s turn. Yui calls him over with a smile. Kanato thinks his heart might be about to burst. She reaches a hand out to him, and all he can see is a guard’s fist going for his nose. He flinches before he can stop himself. 

There’s fire dancing on the floor. Probably not. There’s no way to trust that what he’s seeing anymore is real. He could be dreaming all along. Yui’s hand brushes over his collarbone, spattered with old dribbles of blood, and Kanato is suddenly painfully aware of just how real her presence is. The contact is like electricity up his spine, warmth seeping in with a burn. 

Yui whispers soft little things to him, still with the same scared-animal tone. She sounds kind, bordering on patronizing, yet Kanato can’t help be be grateful. He forces himself to ignore how he all but leans into the sound. 

Her hand combs through his grimy hair, stroking almost lovingly, and that’s all that Kanato can take. 

With a whimper, the tears spill over, sobs shaking his chest before he can stop them. Everything hits him at once; the panic, the fear, the  _ need _ . He’s stuck here, shoved into cages and beaten and left to rot. They might never get back, and all they have to comfort them in this awful world is one moment of their former prey bathing them like animals. The hysteria rises again in Kanato’s throat, the sick need to laugh or cry or maybe both, to scream and break anything that tries to hurt him again. 

He’s in Yui’s lap within the moment, scrabbling desperately against her chest. He’s getting blood on her shirt, he knows it, and the part of him that expects to be hit just makes him cry all the harder. This is  _ ruining _ him. 

To her credit, all Yui does is squeeze him, hard enough that all of Kanato’s broken pieces feel a bit like they could be squished back together. Her arms are stronger than Kanato remembers, or maybe he’s just smaller. Her breath is warm, ruffling his hair. The heat of her seeps into him like a wave. He hasn’t been held like this since– since–,  _ ever _ .

“You’re alright,” Yui tells him, then keeps going, crooning soft words that raise gooseflesh to Kanato’s skin. She’s been talking them through this the whole time, and the fact alone that they need it almost hurts the most. 

Kanato’s heart, whatever he has left, feels like it’s going to burst right out. Yui is still touching him, moving on to spraying him with the liquid heat of the water spray. His brothers, sitting stunned and out of the way, look at Kanato like he’s a living nightmare. As if they couldn’t have guessed that he’d be the first one to break. He’s always been the weak one. 

The world does a twist, a spin, and by the time Kanato can see clearly again, the bath is over. Yui is wiping him down with a towel that’s actually decently soft, and his damp hair hangs in his face in irritating locks. Maybe it’s something to be grateful for that he didn’t feel what would have broken him. The larger part of him cries all the harder because he missed it. Yui’s hand cups his cheek one more time, and Kanato  _ sobs.  _

“I’m sorry. There’s only so much I can do. I’m not supposed to get personal with you; I’m just a volunteer.” Her eyes are so, so sad. Kanato can’t remember the last time someone looked at him with such sympathy. 

She calls Ayato over a moment later, leaving Kanato to crawl back over to the rest of them. Slipping away from her feels like a part of him is dying. The way his brothers are eyeing her implies that they feel much the same. Reiji is shaking now, Kanato notes. Shuu’s eyes look strangely wet. 

Ayato flinches when Yui reaches for him, a sharp, jerky motion that comes off as so much more scared than he’d ever want himself too. He moves willingly, probably too afraid not to comply. In this world, any human could become a source of pain. But all Yui does is pat his head, so, so gently. Her little hand brushes through his hair, and she smiles at him like she’s seeing something wonderful instead of the shattered wreck of him. 

Still talking, going on about nonsense just so they can hear her voice, Yui guides the water spray over Ayato’s back, over blood and filth glued tacky and dry to his skin. Ayato  _ shakes,  _ the look in his eyes going strangely frantic. Yui, whoever this Yui is, is there only source of comfort yet. Kanato can imagine that it’s very, very hard for his brother to live with that. 

Yui’s hands on Ayato’s skin make him flinch all over again, even when all she does is scrub at a stubborn patch of dried, crusty blood. 

When Yui’s touch glances over his stomach, he jerks like he’s been stabbed. That’s where the guards kicked him the day before, most likely still painfully tender. Most likely still feeling dangerously vulnerable. 

Ayato jerks, looking like he wants to scramble away. It’s probably pride alone keeping him in his place, the desire to keep it together if only in front of the person he knows as his prey. He’s maybe in pain, maybe just scared or humiliated or anything in between. But Ayato squirms, bites his lip, and when Yui goes to wash the filth out of his hair, he finally snaps. 

“Fuck you, you stupid bitch!” he yells, the first any of them have dared to speak around her. Ayato smacks her hand away and sits back on his haunches with a look of shaky fury. A collective shock runs through the room. Subaru winces, hard, and Kanato knows exactly what he’s thinking. Ayato can’t keep his mouth shut for anything, if the incident with the guards was any example. “Get away from me! Don’t  _ touch  _ me. I’d never want to be humiliated by someone like you– so get the fuck  _ away  _ before I hurt you!”

Through the little speech, Ayato scoots forwards, hauling himself up onto his feet, shouting at Yui like he wishes he could snap her neck then and there. Watching, Shuu’s head is down, eyes closed like he can’t bear to watch. Reiji’s mouth has dropped in disbelief. Laito, Laito of all of them even now hasn’t said a fucking thing. Subaru looks half ready to get up and shut Ayato up himself if he has to. Kanato just wants to  _ cry.  _

“Pl-please calm down,” Yui soothes, hands clutched to her chest. It’s familiar posture, submissive, and that seems to spur Ayato on more than anything. He lunges down, grabbing Yui by a wrist and hauling her up. 

“You’re going to regret humiliating me. I can’t live with this shit a second longer! I’ll kill you if I have to, I’ll kill you.” Ayato’s voice has slipped to something low, but looking at the sharp lines of his ribcage, feeling the sick, starved feeling low in his own gut, Kanato doubts his brother could.

“Ayato! Sit back down this instant!” Reiji shouts, trying and failing to muster the same scolding tone he usually takes. He can’t bring himself to get to his feet, not after everything they’ve been through already.

“Shut up! You want to do it too! This bitch is treating us like animals, and I can’t fucking stand it for another second. I’m going to make her pay. I’m going to make all of them pay!” 

Ayato twists Yui’s hands behind her back. Ayato leans in, forcing Yui against his chest just like usual, and sinks his fangs into her neck. 

Yui  _ screams.  _

For just a moment, the world goes still. There’s a sense of finality in the air, like this might be where they all die.

 The guards come storming in a second later, and the look of shock on their faces is enough to make Kanato feel sick. They’re going to  _ die.  _ After everything that’s been done to them so far, he has no doubts that these humans could kill them if they wanted to. That they surely would. 

One of the men grabs Ayato under the arms, yanking him away from Yui. Another gets a hand in his hair, wrenches his head back until Ayato yelps from the pain. The third gets ahold of Yui, pulling her free. 

“Take it out back and shoot it,” the third says, and Kanato can  _ see  _ the terror sink into Ayato’s face. Across the room, Subaru sucks in a breath. 

“Wait! I… It was my fault!” Yui interjects, grabbing at the guard’s sleeves. “He was acting scared, and I thought it would be okay to keep going, and he just got startled is all. I pushed too far. Please don’t kill him!”

The look that flickers across Ayato’s face is somewhere between pure, naked fear and a sick, humiliated sort of shock. After that, after  _ that,  _ Yui is standing up for him. This is where he might die. This is where any of them could, and with whatever stupid panic was running through Ayato’s veins frozen solid, there’s nothing left in him to act brave. The slow tears that spill over a moment later are the most raw terror Kanato has ever seen.

“Fine. You stick to that story, you hear? We can take the fangs out and spare the merchandise, but you’d better not go making a fuss later,” the guard says to Yui, who nods her head frantically. 

One guard forces Ayato to the ground, keeping his arms pinned roughly behind his back. The second holds Ayato’s head yanked back; gets a hand around his jaw. The third fetches a pair of pliers from a supply cabinet. Ayato’s eyes flicker from one to the other, like he can’t believe what’s happening, like it hasn’t quite sunk in that he’s doomed. 

“Get out of here,” one of them tells Yui, gesturing towards the door. “You don’t want to hear it screaming. This kind of thing gets messy.”

It’s at that point that Ayato starts to  _ beg.  _

“N-No… You can’t– Tha-That’s… Please, please,  _ pl-please don’t _ .” The tone is sickeningly familiar, the look in his eyes even more so. It’s the way Ayato behaved around their mother, amplified a thousand times, and Kanato thinks he might start laughing all over again. Ayato’s pleads rise to desperate screams, echoing through the room at a nauseating volume. 

Shuu’s eyes are closed. He’s dropped to the floor, curling in, hands over his ears so he doesn’t have to hear it. His shoulders shake like he’s breaking, far too fragile to watch. Reiji is staring, frozen, unable to look away. He’s going to  _ watch.  _ Perhaps he’s too scared to move. Perhaps he feels responsible in some strange way. Subaru is hunched over, trying to hide his tears. He’s biting into his hand, blood dribbling over the pale skin, fighting desperately to ground himself before it happens. 

Kanato himself can barely breathe. He doesn’t want to see this. He doesn’t want to hear the brother who’s protected him for as long as he can remember screaming and crying as his fangs are ripped out with  _ pliers. _

One of the guards wrenches Ayato’s mouth open, hand squeezing his jaw. Yui isn’t in the room anymore. 

“Please, don’t hurt him!” Laito, who’d been staring at the nightmare unfolding in front of him, eerily quiet all the while shouts. His voice is raw and vulnerable, some awful, painful edge that Kanato doesn’t want to think about filling the tone. “Leave him alone, I’m begging _.  _ It was just an accident. It was an accident, I swear. Don’t hurt my brother,  _ please. _ ” He crawls forwards on trembling limbs, getting close enough to cling to one of the guards’s boots, tears spilling over all at once. 

All Laito gets for his trouble is a kick to the face. He shouts, an awful, pained noise. The guard kicks him in the stomach just to be sure he’s down. Laito’s nose is broken for sure, twisted at an odd angle as he clutches his face. Under any normal circumstance, he’d be howling. Now, he’s silent. 

Kanato gags, nausea rising in his throat. He’s going to be sick. He can’t watch this. Ayato’s voice goes small and shaky, begging dying out in place of short, sobbing whimpers that shake through his whole chest. 

With Laito on the floor and no one left to stop him, the guard finally brings the pliers to Ayato’s mouth. There’s a flash of movement that Kanato’s fraying mind can barely track, pliers clamping down on the small, sharp line of one of Ayato’s fangs, and then–  _ then _ – 

The screaming starts. It’s horrible. It’s the worst thing Kanato has ever heard. His big brother howls like he’s dying, sick, awful screams drug out of him by force. Ayato jerks in the guards’ grip, writhing like a fish on a hook. His weakened body means he doesn’t move an inch. The guards hold him down with ease, no matter how viciously he struggles. The one at his mouth pulls and pulls and  _ pulls _ – 

To the sound of Ayato screaming, a piece of white pops out of his mouth. Kanato can’t bring himself to look away. There’s blood, so much of it, pouring over Ayato’s jaw and down his naked chest. Caught in the grip of the guard’s pliers is a fang, pulled free of Ayato’s mouth in one clear rip. The guard drops it to the floor and leans in to get the other one. 

After that, Kanato’s everything goes blurry and numb. He saw it. He saw a fang torn out of his brother’s mouth, saw Ayato’s face as it was pulled free. They’re all going to  _ die  _ here, he thinks, then begins to laugh again. 

. . . 

Subaru watches the first fang torn out of Ayato’s mouth, and is certain he’s going to be sick. Ayato keeps screaming, an obscene amount of blood streaming down his chest. Subaru is going to see this in his nightmares. 

The other fang goes quickly, ripped out even more quickly than the first. Ayato’s howls reach a fever pitch. His skinny chest heaves up and down, every muscle on him tensed like steel, like cord. Subaru’s tongue runs over the twin holes in his own mouth, and feels his chest tighten. His brother, his arrogant brat of a brother is going to match. 

And then, it’s over. The fangs are out, both tossed onto the floor like trash, and the guards drop Ayato almost instantly. He sinks to the floor like a broken doll, clutching his mouth with both hands and screaming and screaming and  _ screaming.  _ Subaru feels himself gag, heave, only choking down vomit by force of will. This might be the sickest thing he’s ever seen, and for once, it’s not happening to some helpless human. 

With a final, unnecessary kick to Ayato’s stomach, just to hear his howls spike and break, the guards abandon them to the mess. They’re probably going to check on Yui. She deserves it. Subaru thinks of her hands in his hair, and almost shudders. If only they could have that back instead of  _ this.  _ If only Ayato could have kept his stupid mouth shut. If only they were all back in the mansion, in a world where humans breaking them would have only been a silly dream. There are a lot more ‘if only’s’. 

Subaru can barely breathe. His chest is tight, lungs feeling like they have a vice squeezing down on them. His heart presses against his ribs, and as Ayato keeps screaming, Subaru decides that someone has to act.

He crouches down next to Ayato, keeping a careful distance in case his brother reacts badly. For a moment, it feels like approaching his mother all over again. He has to be careful. Ayato could blow up again at any second. 

“Hey… Ayato. It’s over. It… I know it hurts. I’m  _ sorry.  _ I should have stopped them, I’m sorry. You need to be quiet now. They could, c-could come back and make things  _ worse,  _ and this is… it’s scaring everyone. Please, Ayato. You need to calm down.” As he talks, Subaru scoots closer to Ayato, eventually laying a hand on his back. Ayato flinches hard at the contact, but his howls die down a bit. Just a bit. 

Trying not to think about how he’s going to have to do the same for everyone else sooner or later, about how he’s going to see just how pathetic everyone has become, Subaru focuses on getting Ayato calmed down. He rubs slow circles on his brother’s back, keeping the same tone he always used with  _ her  _ as he mumbles awkward, useless comforts. 

Eventually, Ayato stops screaming, which is a good thing. The bad thing is that he starts crying moments after, horrible, shuddering sobs that make Subaru’s chest hurt just listening. 

He doesn’t want to think about how much having fangs torn out has to  _ hurt.  _ That kind of pain… it has to be unimaginable. 

How Ayato’s ever going to recover, Subaru doesn’t know. 

Subaru keeps rubbing his brother’s back. Ayato pukes up swallowed blood another minute in, and Subaru has to drag him out of the mess. His tears have escalated to full-on hysterics, the kind of thing that Subaru never thought he’d see outside of Kanato. It’s disconcerting, deeply so. 

“Shut him up,” Reiji hisses soon after, when Ayato’s sobbing rises in pitch. “We can’t have them coming back. We can’t upset them.” When Subaru glances over, Reiji looks downright terrified. He’s hunched over, perfect posture finally ruined, wringing his hands and glancing side to side in nervous flickers. His fangs worry at his lip, drawing blood. 

That’s… even weirder. Subaru finally pulls himself away from Ayato, hoping that he’s stable enough to sit by himself for a bit. He moves towards Reiji, only for his brother, his brother with more pride than any of them, to  _ yelp, _ cowering backwards on some awful instinct. Reiji’s eyes go very, very wide. He looks at Subaru with a sort of terror that he never imagined Reiji could feel. He never imagined Reiji could look so breakable. 

“Reiji, you’re fucked too. Go lay down. None of us need to be awake for this shit.” Subaru tries very hard to sound like his usual self, if only because it might knock some normality back into the situation. 

“A-Alright…” Reiji looks away, shaking. The welts and open wounds on his legs stand out a bright red against his pale skin. Reiji ducks, cowers, and Subaru suddenly realizes that his expression is a familiar one. That this kind of nervous behavior is scarily reminiscent of how he was as a child. He’s responding to  _ orders,  _ calming down a bit only when Subaru told him what to do. The concept is fucked up on a thousand levels. 

But Reiji obeys, curling up small and shaking against one of the walls, and Subaru moves on to the next worst situation. Laito. 

The first move towards Laito, still huddled up on the floor and clutching his broken nose, ends in a raw, awful shriek from his brother. Laito curls in like a dying insect, scrambling to get away, and Subaru digs his fingers into the meat of his palms until he feels blood. 

“Ayato needs you,” he says, keeping his distance. “You’re scared, I know. We all are. But… there isn’t anything we can do about it. Come on.” Daring to get to his feet for a moment, Subaru scoops Laito up off the ground, absurdly thankful that he’s still strong enough to handle his brother’s skinny body. Laito yelps and shudders, but goes disturbingly limp, like he’s too afraid to fight back anymore. Subaru hauls him over to Ayato’s trembling form, trying to ignore how light his brother feels. 

As soon as he sets Laito down, just inches away from Ayato, Laito reacts. He scrabbles forwards, latching himself onto Ayato and burying his face in his hair. Laito whines, high in his throat, and Ayato’s sobs take on a frantic pitch. Subaru remembers, suddenly, that they always slept together. 

Swallowing sudden nausea, Subaru moves to Kanato next. Having all three of them together sounds like a good idea at this point. Being close to each other might be the best comfort he can give them. 

Kanato stopped laughing a while ago, going quiet and still, eerily so. When Subaru nudges his shoulder, he doesn’t respond, just sits perfectly still, curled in, tears dripping down his face. He’s probably seeing things, Subaru thinks. Hallucinations have always been common for his brother. 

“Kanato, you need to go over with those two. You’ll… y-you should feel better if you’re close to them, right? You can move on your own, I know you can. Please, they… they really need you.” Carefully, Subaru gives Kanato a little nudge in the right direction. Either the words sink in or Kanato decides on his own to crawl over to the other two. He snuggles up against Ayato’s other side, hiding his face in his brother’s bare back, and Subaru hurts in a way that he never imagined he could. They’re so  _ close.  _

But that situation is taken care of. Even if all three of them are wrecked, they’ve got each other. That should be enough to prevent anything  too terrible. That should keep them stable at least for a while. 

Now all he has to do is handle Shuu. Considering that Shuu is curled up, clutching his burned hand and staring off emptily into space… 

This is most likely going to be another horrifying one. 

Once he’s by Shuu’s side, Subaru gets a dangerous idea. Or at least, one that would have been dangerous back home. Like this, it might be all he can do. 

“Hey, Shuu.” He nudges Shuu’s shoulder, but gets no response. “Pay attention, lazy-ass. You can’t do this now. You’re not going to be okay on your own, are you? So… go over with Reiji. The other three are doing better with each other, so it can’t hurt, right?” Still trying to sound normal, Subaru finallys gets a dull, empty glance from his brother. 

“Fine…” Shuu mutters, sounding broken and distant. That’s all he says, and even as Shuu rises up to his knees to move over there, Subaru thinks that this has gone much too far. It’s too painful to watch. 

But Shuu goes willingly, flopping down next to a tense, miserable Reiji. For a moment, Subaru thinks that it’s going to end horribly, that Reiji is going to lash out just the same as he would have under any other circumstance. Instead, Reiji goes limp with an awful shudder, eyes fluttering closed. He rolls over on his own, pressing himself to Shuu’s chest even as the other stays deathly still. Subaru watches Reiji,  _ Reiji  _ cuddle up to Shuu’s chest like he needs the contact terribly. Subaru thinks that the world might be ending, or at least, that theirs could be. 

And then, it’s over. All five up them are piled up together in whatever ways could comfort them the most, and Subaru is alone. 

He did it, he tells himself, he kept this mess together for even a little bit longer. No one is screaming anymore, all five of them are snuggled up in their own little piles, and even if that’s the most fucking disturbing thing Subaru has ever seen, it’s so, so much better than the screaming. 

Subaru thinks of his mother, of how she was in this awful world. Her face was the same, the look in her eyes an sick mirror of the way he’s always known her. But here, she loved him. She  _ missed  _ him. She was longing for them cuddled up the same way Subaru’s brothers are right now, and the idea of being pressed to his mother’s chest like he hasn’t been since he was small enough to barely remember it makes Subaru feel closer to breaking than anything. He misses her. He misses her so badly it feels like an open wound in his chest, raw and aching. 

He’s close to breaking, Subaru thinks. He’s in the same boat as the rest of them, and it will only be a matter of time before he ends up just as bad. They’re all falling apart, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. If this all is something that man did, they might never get back home. 

Subaru hauls himself into a corner by himself, laying down and curling up small. He’s so weak, so helpless. He can’t protect any of them. His strength was all he had, and now–, now– 

This is misery in its purest form. This is where they’re all going to die, their insides destroyed and turned into something broken and crushed. 

Subaru falls asleep to tears spilling over once again. 


	5. [05] So that my future self won't be forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! This chapter is sad! :D
> 
> Not so much in the sense of what actually happens, yeah, but the nasty implications are all over the place~ The pets are broken, and it shows. This is the last chapter detailing the pet boys' time with Yui... and as for the last chapter, well, that's going to be a surprise! 
> 
> Warnings this time are few. Except for some minor blood, everything awful is merely referenced this time around! :`D Enjoy the writing, and look forward to the conclusion soon!!!

Kanato’s owner gave him a bear. It’s small and stuffed, fur plush against his hands, and something about the very sight of it makes his stomach clench. A human, his  _ owner,  _ gave him this bear. 

He’s been hugging it ever since Yui pressed it into his hands. Nothing’s ever been given to him like this before. Nothing’s ever come without some kind of cost. Kanato buries his face against the bear’s little head and breathes in deep. It smells good. It smells like  _ her.  _

Laito is curled up on the floor, making something of an effort to sleep. While Kanato can wait until the swirls of thorns crawling along the floor make him dizzy enough to rest, Laito doesn’t have that option. His brother is scared of falling asleep in strange places– or maybe, afraid of what will find him when he wakes up. Well, that and the dreams that never go away. 

“K-Kanato...?” Laito starts after he’s been lying there for a while. Kanato makes an affirmative noise, not taking his face away from the bear.

“There’s something weird happening here. S-Subaru still has his fangs, remember? And we all feel stronger than we did before waking up in Miss Yui’s house...” The title is reflexive. None of them would dare not refer to her properly. “I think... I don’t... I saw something, Kanato. I saw something that’s  _ wrong,  _ and I don’t know what it’s going to mean for us.” Laito shivers, still not looking at Kanato. He remains curled into a tight little ball. 

This is one of those moments, Kanato thinks, where Laito is far smarter than anyone gives him credit for. Laito picks up on bad things. Laito always knows exactly what’s going on. Meanwhile, Kanato can’t do much more than keep track of whatever is crawling along the walls that day. 

“What’s the bad thing?” Kanato asks, hating how small his voice sounds. He tucks his legs in tighter, still carefully squeezing the bear that his wonderful, wonderful owner gave him. “Is it going to get us kicked out...?”

“I can’t say it...” Laito whispers, suddenly sounding like he’s keeping some precious secret. “I  _ can’t. _ J-Just... we have to–”

Laito’s words are abruptly cut off by the door to the little bedroom opening. Kanato squeaks, huddling in on himself and gripping the bear for dear life. Laito chokes on his words, scrambling up and back until his back hits the wall. It’s their owner. Kanato can smell her already, even before he catches sight of her standing in the doorway like she’s afraid to step in. 

“Um... Kanato, Laito... is everything alright?” Yui speaks like she’s legitimately concerned she’s frightened them. How kind of her to try. 

Kanato forces himself to uncurl a bit so that he looks properly responsive to her words, but Laito makes no such attempts. Rather his brother appears to be starting to hyperventilate, whole body going taut. He’s shaking again, looking at Yui like he’s been caught doing something very bad. Kanato squeezes the bear to his chest and closes his eyes. 

He doesn’t want to see what Yui will do next. 

Kanato hears footsteps, the rustling of fabric. He smells Yui much closer to him than before, probably kneeling next to Laito. 

“You’re alright, Laito. I’m not upset. Here, can you please sit up for me?” Yui speaks gently, like shes not angry at all that Laito isn’t up and showing her proper respect. Humans like to see fear sometimes, but they usually like respect even more. Yui doesn’t really seem like the type for either, but Kanato understands by now that there’s always, always a trick. 

Laito sits up so quickly his arms almost slide out from under him in the effort. He’s taller than Yui sitting down, which makes him look deeply uncomfortable, but ducking his head seems to ease that fear a bit. 

“There we go. That’s better. You haven’t done anything wrong, alright. I’m sorry I scared you.” Yui says all of those things so easily, and Kanato almost chokes on nothing. A human apologized to Laito. A human  _ apologized.  _ Yui has seemed like the softest, sweetest human Kanato’s ever met from the very beginning, but this is a new level of accommodating. 

“I–,” Laito also chokes a bit. “I-I apolog-gize as well... I shouldn’t h-ha, have reacted so badly.” Laito swallows hard, tongue running over his fangs. He looks sickeningly nervous, panicked gaze never leaving their owner. All Yui does is make a face like she’s very, very sad. 

He’s still shaking. Laito still looks like a mouse in a trap, his eyes wide and wild. He’d probably bolt from the room and hide if he had the chance.

“You don’t have to be so nervous,” Yui says, sounding just as sad as she looks. “I won’t hurt you.” Very, very slowly, Yui reaches up and cups Laito’s cheek, stroking her thumb over where so many others would have slapped. Laito flinches at the first contact, eyes squeezing shut. When no pain comes, though, he slowly starts to relax, going almost limp under the slow stroke of Yui’s warm little hand over his face. 

It looks downright blissful. Kanato swallows hard, wishing that his master would pay so much attention to  _ him  _ instead. She already gave him his bear, and it’s so, so greedy to want more than that, but with the scene unfolding in front of him, all Kanato wants is to be a part of it. 

After a moment of comforting Laito, of looking at him with the softest, most heartbroken smile Kanato has ever seen, Yui leans forward and presses a little kiss to Laito’s forehead, right between his bangs. 

“I won’t hurt you,” she says again, this time a promise.

Laito does jerk away at that, eyes going helplessly wide. He squeaks, a high, frightened noise, and looks at Yui like she’s possessed. Even as his brother reacts with near-terror, Kanto’s stomach burns with jealousy. He wants that. He wants soft things and Yui’s hands on his skin and everything, everything that he’s never had. Even as he’s too scared to let himself want.

Yui pats Laito’s head with one tiny, delicate hand. She combs her fingers through his bangs, brushing the hair out of his face. Laito makes a truly desperate expression, one that Kanato almost feels uncomfortable seeing. They’re close, of course, but that kind of raw vulnerability feels almost wrong to see from someone else. Kanato closes his eyes again. 

But Yui is over by him just as quickly, standing and stepping over to the chair that Kanato is curled up in with the bear. Kanato’s first thought is that Yui is going to punish him for being up on the furniture, but all she does is crouch down to his level and smile– it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“Could you please come with me, Kanato?” she asks, and Kanato jerks into obedience almost instantly. It doesn’t matter why she asks. 

He drops down off the chair,  _ carefully  _ setting the bear behind him. There’s no way to carry it while he crawls, and since it’s clearly not an important object, it will just have to be left behind. Perhaps it will still be there when he returns. Perhaps someone won’t have taken it away. 

“Ah, it’s okay if you walk,” Yui says, eyes flickering over to the bear. “I want you to be able to take that with you.” Kanato thinks his jaw might have dropped a little bit. Laito is certainly staring like it has.  _ Stand.  _ Yui is permitting him to stand above her height just so he can carry a toy. By all means, it should be a trap. Kanato looks at the bear again and decides that if there’s even a chance he can keep it, he really doesn’t care. 

Kanato stands on unstable legs. He’s unused to balancing his weight upright, and the standing is suddenly difficult. Yui is patient with him, though, and doesn’t complain when it takes him a bit to be able to follow her. Leaving a nervous-looking Laito behind, the two of them walk through a series of hallways that Kanato still can’t properly remember. 

And then, they’re in a kitchen. A nice, clean one that smells like human food and dish soap. A kitchen with a couple of cookies, a ridiculously pink cupcake, and a small cup of pudding on the table. 

Kanato is just trying to decide what to make of the new scenery when Yui gestures for him to sit down at the table– the  _ table _ – right in front of the sweets. Kanato feels his stomach lurch. His first thought is that they might be intended for him, but that’s simply not true. It can’t be. He’s already been fed pretty recently, and there’s absolutely no reason for his owner to allow him such nice-looking sweets anyway. It’s either a trick or a mere misunderstanding. Kanato can’t quite figure out which. 

“These are for you,” Yui says, then, and Kanato feels his throat close up. She can’t be serious. This can’t be happening. He squeezes the bear closer to his chest and tries to stay calm. He doesn’t want to make any more of a scene in front of his owner. “They’re really for you, so please eat whatever you’d like. They’re here because I want you to.”

Yui gives another one of her happy-sad smiles, looking a little worn around the edges. Kanato knows that he could never disobey. 

Setting the bear very, very carefully on his lap, Kanato picks up the cup of pudding. He’s almost not sure how to eat this. If there’s some unknown rule he should be following. It feels wrong just to be touching it. 

Looking at Yui, Kanato knows he could never say no. 

With the spoon that was lying beside it, Kanato takes his first, hesitant bite. As soon as the sugar hits his tongue, he almost drops the spoon. The sweetness is like nothing he’s ever tasted, cloying flavor melting against his tongue. He swallows and goes for the next bite almost automatically. He has to eat it before it gets taken away. He has to finish it quickly. 

At this point, Kanato doesn’t think he could stop even if Yui told him to. The pudding alone is the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. 

The pudding is gone before Kanato can track exactly how fast he’s eaten it. The cookies go next, choked down in three bites each so that his owner can’t take her order back until they’re gone. He’s eating. He’s doing what he’s told. There’s no way Yui can be mad at him after she said he was supposed to. Every bite tastes better than anything Kanato has ever had on his tongue– better than blood, certainly better than what they’re fed. 

Kanato is halfway through the cupcake– the sweetest thing of all– when his stomach decides to rebel. He feels the telltale lurch, the spasms of his throat, and ignores it just long enough to stuff his face with one more massive bite of cake before things start coming up. 

He hits the ground, sliding out of the chair clumsily as food and bile make a violent reappearance. Kanato gags, retches, everything he’d eaten in the last five minutes coming up again all at once as his stomach clenches. 

As soon as his head clears, Kanato realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. Yui told him to eat, not to puke up what she gave him. He’s made a mess. He’s puked all over the floor, gotten the food that his owner so kindly gave him all over the wood even though she  _ told  _ him it was for him. Kanato retches again out of sheer terror, even though nothing but bile comes up. 

“It’s okay. We’ll get it cleaned up. You don’t have to be afraid, Kanato. It was my fault; I gave you too much, I’m sorry.” Yui is kneeling beside him, suddenly, mumbling an endless stream of comforting words and apologies. Her hand is on his back, rubbing little circles as Kanato’s stomach heaves. She’s apologizing to him. She’s  _ apologizing,  _ as if the mistake was anyone’s fault but his. As if it wasn’t Kanato who should have kept it all down. 

Yui eases him away from his mess, this time letting him stay on his knees. As if knowing exactly where he wants to hide, she guides him under the table where it’s small and close and dark. Yui gets a napkin and dabs at his mouth, wiping up vomit and drool. She smiles like her heart is broken. 

Not long after, Yui presses the bear– clean, thankfully clean– back into Kanato’s hands. His body latches onto it before he knows what he’s doing, burying his face in the fur and curling up into a little ball. 

She’s treating him too kindly. He’s done nothing but fuck up, and Yui is still acting like he’s trying his best. Choking on a sob, Kanato thinks that this  _ has  _ to come to an end soon. Humans aren’t like this. Humans aren’t  _ kind.  _ She should be hurting him, beating him, not rubbing his back and giving him sweets and letting him hide. It’s not fair. There’s no way he can live up to this. He’s bound to fail. He’s bound to disappoint her somehow. 

The bear smells like Yui. Kanato breathes in deep. 

. . . 

Shuu lies in a pile on the floor, the most comfortable he’s been in a lifetime. He has warm, soft clothes, a plush rug under his belly, and not a cage in sight. He’s owned. He belongs to a human... for now. 

The exhaustion that’s been weighing Shuu down since the humans started giving up on him feels lightened a bit. His body is stronger, less worn-down, and even though Shuu distantly registers that something is very wrong with that fact, he can’t bring himself to care. He feels better than he has in ages, and Shuu isn’t one to question that. 

His owner pet his head while he was asleep. Yui, the soft, pink human who smiles at every stupid mistake they all make, ran her little fingers through his hair when he was doing nothing but lazing around. The thought is staggering. At any other time, it would have sounded too good to be true. 

Even his brothers, even the most worthless of all of them are being treated well. Reiji being allowed to follow at Yui’s heels is one thing, but the rest of them getting such leniency? Unheard of. Their owner is either playing at something Shuu never wants to find out, or they really have fallen into some kind of paradise. As cynical as Shuu wants to be, it’s so, so hard not to hope that this really could be the kind of home they’ve all longed for. 

At some point, Yui slips into the living room. Shuu notices her quickly. She stops a good ten feet away, staring. This is where anyone else would beat him for being lazy, or take a lighter to his skin if they were feeling particularly mean. Instead, Yui crosses the room with hesitant steps. The scent of her gets closer. A second later, she’s kneeling beside him. Shuu keeps his eyes shut and prays that he won’t be hit for not sitting up and paying attention. He wants to hope.  _ Oh,  _ he wants to hope. 

“Hello, Shuu. You don’t have to get up or anything. I’m just letting you know that I’m here. I brought something for you, if that’s okay?” Yui’s voice, soft as the rest of her, is hesitant. Shuu wonders why any human would need to be hesitant around him. All she has to do is give an order and he has no choice to obey. Well, that or get thrown out on the streets. 

Just thinking about that makes Shuu shudder. He’s tired, so tired, but he doesn’t want to be thrown out of here anytime soon either. He can’t fuck this up. Even if he thought he’d given up on hope a long time ago. 

Shuu is seconds away from hauling himself upright, from sitting up and behaving like the good, respectful pet he’s supposed to be when Yui digs something out of her pocket. It’s a little speaker with a set of buttons along one side. Shuu can’t fathom why an item like that would be necessary while she’s talking to him, but seems to know exactly what she’s doing. 

With a little swallow, she presses one of the buttons on the side. Music starts playing– piano, soft and comforting and weirdly, weirdly familiar. 

“This...” Yui starts, “...I thought that you’d like this one.”

Shuu gets the distinct feeling that Yui wants to say something very different. He doesn’t question it. Now that his eyes are open, he can see the expression Yui’s making; some horrible thing teetering on the verge of happy and about to cry. Shuu’s chest tightens.  _ Fuck.  _ Did he make her cry? If he did, he’s doomed for sure. Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe properly. 

But instead of hitting him or yelling or getting angry, Yui scoots in a little closer. Shuu gets the message quickly. Whether she’s playing at affection or just trying to get him to slip up, she wants physical closeness. 

And Shuu can do that. Even if it makes his whole body tense up just to get into her space, Shuu can do that. When Yui leans back against the couch behind him, Shuu takes the initiative that he hopes won’t get him hit. 

Like the picture of the obedient pet he’s always had in mind, he lays his head in Yui’s lap, forcing his body to go limp. The smell of Yui is almost smothering this close. Between that and the music still filling his head, the way Shuu’s body relaxes might not be entirely forced. 

Yui chokes on a little sob, stifling it behind one hand. Shuu’s chest goes tight with fear, but he forces himself to stay in place. A second later, Yui’s little hand is back in his hair, combing through the blonde fluff with care. She’s not hitting him. She’s not angry. All his owner is doing is petting him like he’s done something to deserve it. It’s overwhelming. This is a reward, plain and simple, and Shuu has never been good for long enough to earn one like this before. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react. 

After a moment, Yui starts humming, her shaky voice following the tune of the piano still playing in the background. The sound goes right to Shuu’s nerves. His whole body shivers, gooseflesh rising on his skin. 

This isn’t right. Vampires aren’t supposed to be treated like this. He hasn’t done anything for her yet– all he’s done is laze around and try to keep to himself, and this human, his owner, is still treating him like he’s done something to keep her pleased. She’s wasting her time, her  _ affection  _ on what amounts to nothing more than a difficult animal. 

It’s not long after that that Shuu feels a presence at the door. It’s one of them, of course it is. Shuu’s eyes slit open. It’s Reiji. Reiji who already has a thousand grudges against Shuu for being lucky, for taking attention away from him, for somehow getting away with things that Reiji thinks he can’t. Reiji, who would ruin this situation in a heartbeat if he was able. Shuu wants to slam his head into the floor. Or maybe slam Reiji’s head instead. 

He finally has this. He finally has an owner holding him and running her fingers through his hair. Shuu thinks that he’d have no choice but to protect this if he had to. Feeling himself tense up, Shuu throws Reiji a dirty glare. Maybe he can get Reiji to back off before Yui sees– 

Nope. Too late. Yui’s head turns towards the door. She smiles when she sees Reiji, which makes Shuu jealous on a thousand levels, but keeps dragging her fingers through his hair, which make a lot of things better. 

Reiji, meanwhile, has a look of utter horror on his face. Well, that and what Shuu can easily place as the desire to toss him out of that situation entirely and take his place as the object of Yui’s affections. Reiji’s fingers curl against the hardwood. His eyes narrow. As soon as Yui looks at him, he forces his expression to change to something much more polite. 

How charming, Shuu thinks. For all the times that he and Reiji have cuddled up on the worst days, huddled together when the pain of some punishment or another is too much, held each other when everything is  _ bad,  _ Reiji still acts like this. Perhaps he’s just desperate. Perhaps he’s afraid. 

“Ah, Reiji. You don’t have to sit all the way over there.” Yui taps the floor beside her with her free hand; a clear order. 

Despite the fact that Reiji looks like he’d sooner be whipped than go near Shuu, he obeys. Reiji crosses the living room quickly and gracefully, crawling to sit beside Yui’s knees in the picture of the perfect, submissive vampire. Kiss up. He’s trying way too hard to look good. To Shuu at least, the over-the-top act just comes off as desperately pathetic. 

“Yes, Miss Yui,” he says when he settles in, responding quickly and promptly– the exact opposite of lazy, lazy Shuu who doesn’t so much as bother to sit up when his owner moves to be beside him. 

Shuu can all but feel his eye starting to twitch.

Yui looks at Reiji for a long minute, her rose-colored eyes studying him carefully. Her fingers slow in Shuu’s hair, and for just a minute, he thinks she’s going to stop altogether.

“You know, you don’t have to be so jealous,” Yui says and  _ both  _ of them almost choke. This is the first time a human has read Reiji so easily. Or maybe the first time one has bothered to. “I can be nice to both of you. Just because I’m with Shuu doesn’t mean you’ll be left out. Here, you lay down too. I think you both need the attention, don’t you?”

Reiji gapes at Yui, for once too surprised to keep himself together. A muscle in his jaw twitches. He stares at Shuu with open hatred, then looks back up to Yui like he’s horribly unsure of what he’s supposed to do, caught between how much he hates Shuu and how much he wants to please her. 

“Come on,” Yui says, and for the first time Shuu has heard from her, her voice leaves no room for argument. “I want you to lie down.”

Her tone makes Reiji shiver. It’s a direct order from his owner. Neither of them would have any choice but to obey, and obey Reiji does. Hesitantly, retaining as much grace as he can, Reiji eases himself to the carpet, laying his head carefully on the other side of Yui’s lap. As soon as he’s up close, his shoulders sag. Shuu can imagine why. As close as they are, the soft, floral scent of their owner is almost suffocatingly good. Reiji curls himself up with no further objection, tucking his hands in close to his chest. 

Yui smiles, then, letting her other hand go to Reiji’s hair. The first drag of her blunt little fingernails draws a whine out of Reiji’s chest. A matching sigh slips out of Shuu when she goes back to playing with his hair too. The touch is... a lot. Shuu feels like he’s drifting, melting. The still-playing piano music is sinking down to the deepest parts of him, bleeding out lines of tension that he’d thought were permanent. He’s actually  _ relaxing.  _

Shuu closes his eyes again, letting himself drift. A sick little part of him thinks that this would be better if he could cuddle up to his little brother like they did when they were kids. If he could be close enough to protect him. 

But Reiji has grown up. Reiji has grown up full of hate, and it’s only in their worst moments that those kinds of things will ever happen again. Shuu swallows and pushes the thought of a smaller Reiji clinging to his chest aside. Whatever all the attention is doing to him, it’s dragging out a protective side that Shuu hasn’t thought about in a good, long while. 

“It’ll be alright,” Yui breathes, snapping Shuu out of his thoughts. “I promise, it’ll be alright. I won’t– I won’t hurt _ any _ of you.” At first, it sounds like Yui is trying to reassure them. When Shuu thinks about it, her tone sounds a lot more like she’s fighting to reassure herself. 

. . . 

She touched him. Subaru’s new owner touched him when he hadn’t done a single thing to earn it. Her soft, gentle little hands were in his hair without any attempts to pull or drag, and Subaru still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to take that. He’s the worthless one out of the lot of them. He’s the one who’s hovered above death row since childhood. He’s the one who no one, no one  _ ever  _ has wanted. No one has done more than tolerated. 

Subaru is big and strong and far too violent. He lashes out when he’s scared. He’s hurt people before, people who deserved it, but he’d never,  _ never  _ do anything to hurt Yui. He doesn’t think he could. 

All he wants is to be good for her. At this point, it’s all he has left than he  _ can  _ do. Why Yui took all of them in, Subaru will never know. Why she bothered with him is a point of even more confusion. Yui may be wasting her time, but Subaru is determined to do something right for once. 

(He can obey her. He doesn’t have to be thrown away. He can be good if he gets just this one more chance. He won’t fuck it up again.)

Subaru spends a lot of time huddled down in the closet, trying to be as small and inoffensive as possible. The dark, enclosed space feels good in a way he isn’t used to, even from a cage. Subaru thinks he might be happy just to stay there forever, where he can’t hurt anything and nothing can hurt him, but then, he hears a horrible crashing noise from somewhere nearby. 

It’s one of his brothers. Subaru knows it before he can even guess what the noise was. Probably Ayato, since the two of them are the only ones who ever make mistakes that big. Subaru winces. Whatever Ayato did, he’s going to  _ ruin  _ it. Running his tongue over fangs that aren’t supposed to be there, Subaru feels a sudden burst of anger. How  _ dare  _ he? They’re all finally safe, and here one of them is fucking it up. Even he can stay in the closet and not hurt anything, so why can’t they? Why can’t the  _ better  _ ones?

Quickly concluding that he might look better if he’s the one to stop whatever’s going on, Subaru slips out of the closet, breath coming fast. It’s terrifying to be in an owner’s home, but–, but he can’t  _ help  _ it. He has to do something to preserve his own safety. 

The sound came from a room that turns out to be the kitchen. And yes, the cause of it is Ayato. 

Subaru’s brother is sitting in the middle of the shattered shards of what used to be a mixing bowl, food spattered around him in a horrible mess. Even his red hair is matted down to almost pink with what’s probably flour. Subaru’s fingers twitch with the urge to punch something, particularly a certain fuck-up of an older brother who’s ruining everything. 

“Ah, Subaru,” Ayato says when he notices Subaru at the door. “Wh-What are you doing here...?” He at least has the decency to sound nervous, eyes flicking back and forth, watching for Yui. 

“I think the whole house heard the crash,  _ idiot.” _

“Did not!” Ayato yelps, his voice pathetically childish. 

“What the fuck where you even trying to do!?” Subaru snaps back, not quite registering that he’s yelling. Whatever. Ayato deserves it. 

“Make food! Miss Yui made something good for me, so I wanted to make her something too! I’m a house pet, not like  _ you.  _ I can cook and do all kinds of indoor stuff!” Ayato is a fucking idiot, but that’s a low blow. Subaru’s strong build and sheer strength mean he’s doomed for labor. Until Yui, he never would have had a shot at being kept inside and cared for. 

From there, Subaru loses track of exactly what happens. He knows that he says something back to Ayato, who responds with something utterly infuriating. The next thing Subaru knows, he’s punched a section of the floor in right beside his brother’s head, has Ayato pinned to the ground. 

For just a second, the world freezes. There are panicked tears in Ayato’s eyes. Subaru’s done it again, his temper has gotten the better of him, and there’s no hiding it from Yui, from his owner– 

Yui is standing in the doorway. 

“S-Sorry!” Subaru yelps, scooting back off of Ayato so quickly he falls on his ass. Even as he wills himself to shut up and kneel at her feet and beg for forgiveness, not another word will come out. He’s frozen, petrified. 

Yui looks at the two of them with huge, terrified eyes. There’s blood on Subaru’s knuckles and a hole in the floor, and Ayato is starting to cry for real. The mess around them surely looks like it’s  _ both  _ of their faults. He’s ruined it. He messed up, and now Yui won’t ever treat him softly again. 

Instead of yelling, instead of hitting him for his fuck-up, Yui crosses the room with soft steps. When she gets close to the two of them, she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath and making a face like she’s very, very tired. 

“What happened here,” she asks, and it somehow doesn’t sound like an accusation. “No, more importantly, are both of you alright...?”

Subaru feels tear tracks running wet lines down his face.

. . . 

It wasn’t his  _ fault.  _ All Ayato was doing was being good and trying to make food for his owner to thank her for being so good to him, and stupid Subaru had to go and ruin it. Yeah, he’d made a mess, and yeah, he might have been panicking over that a little, but he could have cleaned it up! 

But now, Yui is standing right there. Now, there’s a hole in the floor that was almost a hole in Ayato’s head, both he and Subaru are crying, and it’s so, so obvious that none of them are going to have a home for long. 

Instead of anything painful, though, all Yui does is ask if they’re okay. 

“F-Fine,” Subaru chokes out, so tense that his throat must be going tight. He’s shaking so hard Ayato can see it. 

Ayato would be shaking too if he might be going back to death row. 

“I’m okay too!” Ayato says, wincing as it comes out as more of a shout. He is. He’s just as fine as Subaru is, and his owner doesn’t have to waste a single bit of time on him. He can clean up the mess all by himself, and Yui can be mad at Subaru instead. The chances of that actually happening are slim, but Ayato hopes nonetheless. 

Yui makes the same face Ayato’s seen a lot from her– one like she’s very, very sad but trying to smile anyway. Instead of saying anything, she steps over to the sink and runs cool water over a little kitchen towel. 

Yui kneels down next to Subaru, her knees in the mess on the floor. Ayato flinches. His mistake got his owner dirty. She’ll have a reason to punish him for that. Ayato watches nervously. Yui is only holding the little cloth, but she could still get angry and start hurting them at any second.

But all Yui does is very gently, very carefully take one of Subaru’s hands into hers. Subaru flinches and stutters out another apology, looking like he’d scramble away and hide if he thought he could get away with it. Ayato braces himself to see how they’re going to be punished, but instead of anything cruel, Yui just dabs at the open splits on Subaru’s knuckles– broken open when he punched the floor– with the towel. She doesn’t scrub or try to tear anything open; just carefully wipes away the blood. 

Ayato can see the way Subaru’s shaking worsens, his red eyes painfully wide. Yui cleans him up little by little. She cleans off both of his hands oh-so-gently, then moves to wipe the tears off of his face. Ayato watches the whole situation unfold with nothing short of furious jealousy. Subaru fucked up, so why’s _he_ getting treated all nice?  
“Y-You do–, d-don’t hav-ve to...” Subaru only barely gets out, his childhood stutter kicking in triple-fold. His expression is so, so vulnerable. “Pl-Please don’t was–,waste y-your time on m-me.” 

“I’m not wasting time. I’ve told you, I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t hurt people, Subaru. I... I don’t hurt people. I couldn’t. Not you.”

Yui smiles, then, even as it looks like she’s going to cry. 

After a moment of Subaru looking utterly frozen, Yui leans in. She presses a careful kiss to Subaru’s forehead while he’s too stunned to flinch, whispering something that Ayato can’t quite make out. Subaru’s shoulders drop like strings have been cut, a horrible, dry, broken sob leaving him. 

Yui finishes cleaning up Subaru’s wounds. Yui smiles at Subaru again, soft and sweet. Ayato’s stomach burns with jealousy he never thought he could experience. This is unfair on every fucking level. 

But then, Yui turns to him. Leaving a cleaned-up Subaru to sit back, stunned, Yui moves over to kneel beside Ayato this time. She cups his chin very carefully, pretending not to notice the way he twitches back with fear. With a clean towel, she begins to wipe at the spots of flour and other food spattering his face, so gentle Ayato thinks he really could cry. 

“D-Don’t hurt me,  _ please,”  _ comes out for some reason, just when Yui’s fingers brush his cheeks bare-skinned. It’s a stupid thing to say because it doesn’t matter. If his owner wanted to hurt him, she could. Ayato wouldn’t be allowed to complain. He’d have no right to protest what she did. 

And, he thinks, if it was Yui doing the hurting, he might not even want to. Her hands are soft, he thinks dizzily. She smells like flowers and something chokingly sweet even from where he sits. 

“I won’t,” Yui says, sounding like she’s trying very hard to be strong. She goes to say something else, but cuts herself off with a little gasp. 

A smell hits Ayato’s nose, something that sets every nerve in his body on edge. Sweet, fresh, the exact smell that makes his stomach clench viciously every time he’s near it–  _ human blood.  _

When he looks down, he sees that Yui cut her hand on one of the shards of the bowl he dropped. It looks like a small cut, at least from here, but the blood welling up and dropping in little crimson beads onto the floor is already almost too much to handle. Ayato swallows, feeling himself sway with sudden dizziness. Fresh. It’s  _ fresh.  _ They’re not allowed near any human blood that doesn’t come old and from a bag, and the smell of this alone is going right to whatever impulse-control Ayato has left. 

He makes a quiet, choked off noise when Yui lifts her hand, inspecting the cut with nervous eyes. Subaru is staring too from where he sits, but Ayato is so much  _ closer,  _ and oh, he can’t do this. The smell is smothering him. It’s the sweetest blood he ever could have imagined. 

“Ayato,” Yui starts, still staring at the little drips of blood on her finger. “I... I want you to lick this. Please.” 

The world slows to a standstill. Lick it. Put real, fresh human blood into his mouth. His owner is telling,  _ ordering  _ him to do the thing that would have gotten him killed anywhere else. 

Yui looks up at him with the saddest eyes Ayato has ever seen. He gets the sudden feeling that she’s searching for something familiar. 

Without another thought, he leans down and licks up the blood. 


	6. [06] My glass heart battered 'til it breaks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS DONE!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D 
> 
> Seriously, I kinda can't believe I finished this O-O It took me forever, there were tons of road-blocks, but it's _done_. The story doesn't exactly end on a happy note, but I feel like it's a satisfying conclusion to the whole mess. I hope everyone enjoys!!!
> 
> dixbolik-lovers.tumblr.com

The brothers return to normal. It’s sudden. Yui goes to bed with the versions of the boys that she’s spent a week learning to take care of, and wakes up to the same ones that have been terrorizing her for months. 

For a little bit, Yui thinks that things are going to go back to the way they were. It seems, somehow, like they should. Whatever happened, whatever it is that Yui doesn’t understand, it doesn’t seem possible that the brothers could truly have changed in any way that matters. 

Yui learns quickly that she’s very, very wrong. 

. . . 

She found Shuu first. The eldest and strongest of the vampire was asleep in the living room where she left him, back when she was still able to run her fingers through his hair without fear of retribution, his body still sprawled out on the carpet. He’d woken up before she could even get close, eyes snapping open the second she stepped through the door. 

But then, Shuu had looked at her with some horrible, dangerous combination of fear and confusion, his eyes giving away more genuine emotion than Yui had ever seen from him. For just a second, Yui had seen parts of that boy’s  _ soul.  _ She’d seen something truly broken. 

After that, things had been a blur. Shuu had dismissed her with a glare, hauling himself to his feet and storming out of the living room on his own. It didn’t take a genius to realize that things must have changed back, somehow. Yui had tried to breathe a sigh of relief, then, to reassure herself that the nightmare of the vampires that weren’t who they should be was over and done. That she’d never have to think about that again. And yet, the look in Shuu’s eyes had given her pause. Something wasn’t right. 

And now, Yui knows that nothing is going to be right for a very long time. Not just Shuu, all  _ six  _ of them, act like they’ve been tortured. For all Yui knows, they have been. Shuu doesn’t come out anymore. Yui can try to assume that he’s still just sleeping wherever he pleases, that it’s mere coincidence that she hasn’t seen him in days. Yui can also try to pretend like everything else is normal and well. That certainly doesn’t make it true. 

This is why, when Yui is scouring the house looking for one of her possessions that Ayato had moved before this whole mess even started, she’s downright startled to finally catch sight of the missing eldest son. 

Shuu is in a bathtub, which is nothing new. He doesn’t have his earbuds in, which is  _ very  _ new. 

He’s also buried up to his chest in blankets and looks like he’s been making camp in that bathroom for longer than Yui wants to think about. There are dark circles under his eyes, his hair is an utter mess, his clothes are beyond wrinkled, and the way he looks at Yui when she steps into the assumingly-abandoned bathroom makes her stomach clench. 

“You...” Shuu mutters, clearly trying very hard to sound like his usual self. Yui swallows. “What do you think you’re doing here?” 

“Ah, Shuu, um, I was just... j-just looking for something.” Yui has to go out of her way to remind herself that this is the real Shuu, not the one who curled up in her lap like a sleepy cat and let her stroke his hair. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I can leave if you’d like...”

“Then get out.”

Yui flinches, then notes just as quickly that Shuu is looking back and forth almost nervously, that he’s clutching one hand to his chest. There’s something wrong here. Something that Yui is going to find out. 

“Um... Shuu? Are you alright...? No one’s seen you for days. We– I’m worried. Is there something wrong?” Even though Yui knows it’s a bad idea to ask, she finds herself saying it. It’s not like her to leave someone alone when they’re suffering, and inhuman monsters seem to be no exception. 

Shuu twitches. Or rather, he almost  _ flinches.  _ Where his eyes were darting all over the room, suddenly he’s staring right at Yui. He looks tense all over. He looks on edge, like Yui even coming into the room has ruined whatever peace he thought he may have had. It’s a disturbing look on someone as laid-back as Yui has always known Shuu to be. 

“I’m  _ fine, _ ” Shuu hisses, actually  _ hisses.  _ It’s the most emotion Yui thinks she’s ever heard in his voice. “Now get out like you said you would. It’s too troublesome to get up, so I’m staying right here.”

With the words, Shuu tips his head back, stretching out and laying back in the bathtub like he doesn’t have a care in the world. His motions look decidedly forced. He still doesn’t put his earbuds in. Yui frowns instinctively. This isn’t right. Shuu is nervous in a way that’s beyond any reasonable explanation. He’s trying way, way too hard. Asking might be a terrible idea, but Yui opens her mouth anyway. She’s  _ worried.  _

“Shut up!” Shuu shouts before she can so much as get a word out. He sits bolt upright, clutching the edge of the tub so hard Yui can see it cracking. “Get away from me! Just get out of here! I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to get up, just leave me  _ alone _ already!”

Even as he’s yelling at her, Shuu sounds  _ afraid.  _

He’s shaking all over, legs curling in as his arms wrap around his chest. Shuu’s curling up like a scared child, and every bit of sympathy Yui’s had for these boys up until now pales in comparison to this. 

Shuu continues to tuck himself into a little ball. His head drops, his chest heaving with too-fast breaths. Yui gets the sudden impression that Shuu might not have slept in all the days he’s been in here alone. She swallows again, harder, trying to think of something, anything she could do, but knowing that the chances are none. This isn’t something she can fix. 

“Alright, Shuu. I’ll leave now. I’m sorry for disturbing you. Please sleep well.” The last bit is more of an afterthought, and a dangerous one at that. 

Yui shuts the door behind her when she leaves, cutting Shuu off from the rest of the world once again. Maybe he’ll feel better if he’s in there by himself for a while longer. Maybe he just needs to relax. Yui bites her lip at the idea. She knows those thoughts aren’t true. 

. . . 

Reiji throws himself into housework in a way Yui’s never seen. The meals prepared for all of them become increasingly elaborate, constant improvements piled high on plates that no one save Yui even shows up to touch. Reiji cooks like he doesn’t know what else to do with himself. Yui’s seen him spend six hours in the kitchen in one go. 

The cleaning is the same. Yui swears he’s picking up jobs that he’s never touched before. Surfaces in isolated parts of the mansion that have been covered in dust for as long as Yui’s been there are suddenly spotless. Every floor is sparkling, wood is polished to perfection, and there’s not a bit of clutter Yui can see. She never catches Reiji cleaning, but with the evidence in front of her, it’s impossible not to know that he’s doing it. 

Any time Reiji isn’t buried in some chore or another, he’s shut in his lab, door locked while the strange scents of chemicals bubble out from inside. Yui tries to trail after him for a while, tries to see if she can say anything, but gives up when all it gets her is a door slammed in her face. 

She talks to Reiji a few times– short, passing conversations. He doesn’t say much, doesn’t even bother to scold her for whatever failings he must see. Rather, his crimson eyes look wild and spooked, his posture visibly unsettled. He seems to duck out of conversations as quickly as he possibly can. Even his speech is clipped and evasive. 

Yui is so far beyond concerned she doesn’t know where to start with all the worry she has inside her. They’re all acting strange, so strange. How she’s supposed to be the one to cope with this, Yui doesn’t have any idea. 

Reiji of all people, composed, picture-of-perfection  _ Reiji  _ acting like he’s dying on the inside is disturbing on a level Yui never would have imagined. While parts of her can’t help but wonder if the monsters deserve it, the larger whole of herself knows she could never wish such a thing on anyone. 

Yui catches Reiji in the kitchen, eventually. 

All she’s trying to do is help clean up the dishes from her meal a short while earlier, but she manages to open the door just in time to see Reiji hunched over the sink, up to his forearms in hot, soapy water. 

He’s doing dishes. Reiji, with his sleeves rolled up, is doing dishes. Yui never thought she could be so disturbed by housework. 

She already has a feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong. 

As soon as he notices her, Reiji’s head whips around. His glasses are half-falling off of his nose, his shirt rumpled and rolled up over his elbows. His hair is a disaster, and he’s sporting dark circles that perfectly match Shuu’s. He looks like a mess.  _ Reiji  _ looks like an utter mess. 

“Ah, hello, Reiji,” Yui starts, hoping that the words will come out right. Hoping that she won’t mess this up any more than it already is. “Dishes...?” 

“Yes. What else would I be doing? No one else is going to clean up properly.” With his words, Reiji gives a plate a vicious scrub. “It’s left to me. I have more to do than you have any idea of, so please,” another scrape of sponge against glass, “dismiss yourself without me having to do so for you.”

This is disturbing. Reiji looks downright unhinged, and Yui already has the feeling that he hasn’t slept in days. That kind of thing can’t be healthy, even for a vampire. “Um... Reiji. Are you alright? You look sort of... sort of tired.” Yui ventures very carefully, trying to choose her words well. She doesn’t want to poke at the wrong thing or make anything somehow worse.

“ _ Yes.  _ I am perfectly alright. Now place that dish by the sink and remove yourself from the kitchen at once. I have no desire to waste time speaking to you.” Somehow, Reiji’s words aren’t particularly convincing. 

Yui takes a deep breath. In. Out. Trying not to get nervous. 

“Reiji, you need to stop and get some rest. Please, put the dishes down.” She’s not expecting much more than a glare and harsh words. 

Instead, Reiji very literally drops the dish he’s holding. It plops back into the water as he freezes, eyes going very wide. He swallows once and takes a step back from the sink, seemingly ignoring how his soaked hands drip water and suds onto the floor. He listened to her. No. He  _ obeyed.  _

For just a second, Reiji looks way too much like a scared child for Yui’s comfort. The look he gives her is pure compliance, pure submission, like he’d obey any order she gave him so long as someone would be telling him what to do. But all too quickly, that look fades away, his expression snapping back to the usual one that Yui suddenly recognizes as guarded. 

“I–, I-I do not need a rest,” Reiji gets out after way too long to preserve his dignity. “I’m  _ fine. _ ” Even as he says it, his voice is shaking. Whether from the humiliation of having followed her order without question or whatever’s hiding in his head, Yui will never know. Reiji pauses, looks away, then mutters, “I will have a break once the dishes are finished. Will you leave me alone if I comply with that much?”

Oh, Yui thinks,  _ oh,  _ this is bad. Someone like Reiji obeying without a second thought. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to react to this. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to respond. Feeding into whatever part of Reiji needs orders seems like what she might have to do, but  _ can  _ she? Is Reiji really going to do what she says this easily?

“Okay. Get the dishes done, please. Then go get some sleep. You need to take care of yourself.” Yui says it with more confidence than she feels. Yui puts on a shallow smile and tries to pretend like it’s the right thing to do. 

. . . 

Yui doesn’t see Ayato for almost a week. She’d found him the first day things were back to not-quite-normal. For just a moment, Ayato had sat sprawled back on the floor, looking up at Yui like she was going to kill him. His eyes had been dizzy and glazed, and while the moment hadn’t lasted long, it was all Yui needed to know that Ayato wasn’t quite right. 

Now, she hasn’t seen him. It could be like the others. Ayato could be hiding for a thousand reasons, or she could just be getting unlucky enough not to catch him. It’s  _ Ayato,  _ Yui tries to remind herself. Someone like him could never stay down for long. There’s simply no way he could. 

On impulse, one day, Yui leaves Takoyaki out in the kitchen. Making it for the other Ayato had seemed to do wonders, so maybe leaving it for the one that’s back where he belongs will do some good as well. 

A part of her wants to help them. 

As cruel as the vampires have been to her, Yui can’t stand to see anyone suffer like they are. Not even after what they’ve done. 

She spends a lot of time thinking about how she’s supposed to make things better, about what she can possibly do to help. There aren’t many conclusions to come to, and even fewer that will do any real good. Mostly, Yui just makes herself feel like she’s the one who’s helpless here. 

This is why, when Yui gets the tell-tale feeling that someone is following her down one of the mansion’s dark halls, she doesn’t have it in her to react. At any other time, she’d be terrified. Now, she’s half-hoping that one of them will do something normal. Even being bitten would be better than watching the six of them break down into little pieces. 

A hand grabs Yui’s shoulder, whirling her around. She’s met with very familiar green eyes, Ayato’s tense, almost angry expression staring down at her. He grips her wrist maybe a bit too tight, glaring at her like everything is just the way it’s meant to be. For just a second, it feels  _ normal.  _

“Wh-Where have you been?” Yui starts before Ayato has a chance to say anything. Ayato’s shoulders tense, a frown tugging at his lips.

“You don’t need to know that! Yours Truly’s business is nothing for you to worry about. I’m thirsty now, so you’re going right back to being my prey. Better thank me for the break.” Ayato flashes Yui a grin that she realizes with a sinking sense of dread is trying way too hard to look confident. There’s fear in his eyes and a quiver in his hands, and Yui knows already that this situation could blow up at any given moment. 

“Right. U-Um...” Yui closes her eyes, forcing herself to go lax. Her body wants to be afraid, but maybe this is just what she has to do. No one’s tried to bite her in days. No one’s so much as gotten close. 

For just a second, Yui thinks Ayato is really going to do it. He leans in enough that she can feel the chill of his breath on her neck, his grip on her wrist tightening to the point that she feels a bone creak. Yui bites her lip, bracing for pain, but before the slightest prickle of fangs can come, Ayato shoves her away like he’s been burned. 

“Fuck!” he yelps, taking a quick, unsteady step backward. “Don’t–! G-Get away from me!” Yui has all of three seconds to be worried before Ayato stumbles and falls on his rear, hitting the ground hard. 

“A-Ayato...?”

“ _ No!  _ Don’t come any closer, please–!” Ayato’s voice suddenly lacks every drop of confidence it had before. “Stay away from me!”

Ayato, eyes wide and wild, tries to scramble away from Yui. All he succeeds in doing is clumsily scrabbling his shoes against the wood. He’s cowering, downright  _ cowering,  _ looking up at Yui like he’s truly terrified. He’s shaking now, shuddering so hard that Yui can see it. He’d tried to bite her not thirty seconds ago, and now  _ this?  _ Yui wants to scream, to get down on her knees and shake him until he quits looking at her like she’s going to be the one to hurt him. She wants to force things to go back to normal. 

“Ayato, I’m not going to do anything to you! Y-You were the one who grabbed me. I didn’t–” Yui barely gets the words out before Ayato  _ screeches,  _ one hand flying up to cover his mouth. He curls up fast, dropping onto his side as every limb tries to curl in close to his trembling body. 

“Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me,  _ please!  _ I’m sorry! I won’t– I won’t do it again–  **_Please_ ** don’t take my fangs...!” Ayato is babbling, nonsense pleads to not be hurt spilling out of him endlessly. Yui raises a hand to her own mouth, biting down on one finger so she can’t say anything else. This is sick. ‘Fangs’. Why Ayato would be begging her not to take his fangs, Yui doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand any of this! Ayato keeps begging, his tone growing more and more desperate. 

When Yui notices tears in his eyes, she thinks this might be all she can take. Her chest hurts, boiling over with sympathy for the same creature that tried to drown her not so long ago. She’s truly, truly stupid. 

“Okay, Ayato. I won’t touch you. I’m going to leave now. No one is going to hurt you.” Yui doesn’t try to force a smile this time. She drops her hands to her sides, takes a very deep breath, and forces herself to turn away. There’s nothing she can do, and she needs to recognize that. 

Yui walks away to the sound of Ayato sobbing. 

. . . 

No one sees Kanato for even longer. He’s in his room, Yui knows, but that’s about the end of it. The mansion is surprisingly silent without Ayato picking on him, without the ensuing tears and tantrums. A part of Yui almost misses the sound of it all, if only because it meant that things were normal. 

For a while, Yui tries the same trick she does with Ayato. She bakes whenever Reiji is out of the kitchen, preparing endless trays of cupcakes and cookies, cups of pudding and double-layer cakes. She bakes anything that she can think of. For a while, it’s a form of stress-relief. She’s doing something. She’s doing something, no matter how small, to try to restore some sense of normalcy to the house. Even if it doesn’t work, even if her efforts go completely ignored, she can’t say she didn’t try. 

But, of course, it  _ doesn’t  _ work. Yui leaves the sweets out on the table every night for a week. Every night, they’re exactly where she left them, completely untouched. There’s not a sign of Kanato, and no one else in the house who’s up and moving appears to care much for sweets. Yui’s attempt at ‘trying’ seems to be doing nothing more than wasting food. 

She wants to try to find him. Yui knows that Kanato is in his room, but knowing that and getting him to open his door are two very different things.

Yui does work up the courage to go to Kanato’s room one night. She stands outside the door, not daring to knock, just listening carefully for any sign of life within. After a while, she starts to hear Kanato’s voice. 

He’s talking to someone. 

Or, Yui realizes quickly, not  _ someone  _ at all. There’s no one in there, no response. All she can assume is that Kanato is either talking to the walls themselves or someone who’s not really there at all. She doesn’t like either option. She  _ really  _ doesn’t like either option. 

That’s the point where Yui decides something has to be done. As much as she knows she shouldn’t care what happens to these horrible boys, she does. Standing by and watching while they suffer just makes her chest ache with guilt. It’s stupid. It’s soft-hearted and naive, and Yui knows it. Even so, she’s stuck here, and now, she just wants to see things back to normal. 

So Yui goes for the sweets one more time. She makes another cup of pudding, but instead of leaving it on the table for someone, hopefully Kanato, to find, she carries it all the way back to his room. 

Yui gathers her courage and tries to knock. No one answers. There’s not so much as a pause in the mumblings she can make out from the other side of the door. Yui swallows hard and thinks about what she should do. Eventually, after she feels like she’s stood outside the door for long enough, she tries the handle. It turns, and the door swings open with a  _ creak.  _

Inside, the room is almost completely dark. There’s a dim nightlight on against one wall, but other than that, absolutely nothing. 

Kanato himself is curled up in the far corner. All he’s wearing is a white, rumpled dress shirt and a pair of frilly shorts, he’s clutching Teddy to his chest desperately, and the dark circles under his eyes appear to have magnified threefold. He’s curled up fetal position, limbs tucked in tight. 

Worse yet, he’s still mumbling, words that Yui can only barely make out. It seems like he’s talking to someone– whether it’s the walls or Teddy Yui thinks she’ll never know. Kanato’s gaze is unfocused, staring at a point somewhere past the floor. He’s almost perfectly still, save for a slight back and forth rocking motion that makes Yui’s chest clench with worry. 

“Um... Kanato? I brought you something to eat,” Yui says nervously, hoping she won’t get a bad reaction. “I’ve been worried. You haven’t come out of here in so long...” Her voice trails off in the end when words fail. 

Kanato spends a moment with his eyes tracing something along the far side of the floor. Then, suddenly, he snaps to attention, staring at Yui with an absolutely haunted gaze. He looks so far beyond traumatized that Yui can’t imagine being able to help, let alone fix this. Kanato stares at her, shivering all over, his violet eyes wide with some emotion Yui can’t place. His rocking motion stops, freezes. Slowly, slowly, he uncurls. 

“M-Mother...?” Kanato gets out, and Yui’s blood runs cold. 

“N-No. It’s Yui. Not... not her,” she says, trying to sound calm. A part of her is starting to feel like screaming. This is just too much. 

“Mother, you came b-back for, f-for me...” Kanato chokes out, sounding suddenly close to tears. “Y-You, c-ca–, came back... I mis-ssed you. I– I, ah,  _ pl-please  _ do, d-don’t leave me again...” He’s choked up, stuttering, faint sobs starting to slip out as he trips over his words. 

Yui feels her blood run cold. He’s hallucinating. He has to be. Whatever Kanato’s seeing, it’s definitely not her. Yui has only a vague idea of what the triplets’ mother was like, but she knows that the woman was far from kind. 

But... it’s not like it would do Kanato any good to dismiss him. He’s seeing her. For all he knows, he’s really seeing her. Yui probably couldn’t talk him out of that mindset if she tried. She sighs. She’s going to hate herself for what she’s about to do, but it’s necessary. It might be the only way she’ll get out of this while causing as little pain as possible. 

“I won’t leave, Kanato. Here, I brought you something to eat.” Yui kneels down, presses the pudding cup and a spoon into Kanato’s almost-limp hands. “Please, eat. You can eat for me, right?” She doesn’t encourage it. She doesn’t confirm that she’s his mother, but she doesn’t try to tell him otherwise. It’s probably safest just to let Kanato believe what he does, not try to convince him that he really is hallucinating his dead mother. 

Kanato hesitantly takes the spoon in a motion that borders on compliant. Still mumbling, he brings some of the pudding to his mouth. 

Yui, daringly, places a hand on Kanato’s back. She traces gentle circles while Kanato eats. Silent tears trail down Kanato’s cheeks. He’s still seeing things, surely, but Yui knows better than to interfere. 

. . .

In an event that doesn’t surprise Yui a bit anymore, Laito also vanishes. She doesn’t see him even once from the time everything returns to normal. According to the minimal information she gets out of Reiji, no one else has either. He’s in his room, apparently, locked there and refusing to come out even for meals. Reiji seems almost concerned by the idea, but then again, Reiji has been concerned about almost everything lately. 

A part of Yui wants to leave Laito be. The few times she’s dug up anything resembling trauma in the boy, it’s never ended well for her. Laito has a violent side when he tries, and Yui really,  _ really  _ doesn’t want to end up mixed up in that again. But the larger part of her insists that the boys, all of them, deserve her sympathy and care. Whether she likes them very well or not, they’re alive and they’re suffering. Yui can’t bring herself to leave such a situation alone, no matter how foolish she knows the choice to be. 

She thinks of the others, how all three triplets have chosen to hide themselves away in this time of stress, going where no one can find them and refusing to let anyone or anything in. She thinks of what that must say about the insides of them, what it must mean. 

Yui quickly decides that she doesn’t like thinking about that. 

So Yui spends as much time as she can just wandering around. She passes Laito’s room a few times. Even leaning in close to the door, she doesn’t hear a thing. There’s no way to tell if that’s a good or bad thing. 

Eventually, Yui decides that she has to do something. When helping Reiji with chores and managing how often he rests, when her rare conversations with Subaru don’t do anything to ease her worry, she finally decides that she’s going to have to brave the darkness that is Laito. 

Yui forces herself to go to Laito’s room again, this time with the intention of getting inside. And, with any hope she has, getting him to come out. He hasn’t been eating. Nothing Reiji’s made for him has been touched. It’s that fact that truly sealed Yui’s decision. Standing in front of the closed door, nothing but silence around her, Yui prays she won’t regret it. 

She knocks once. No answer. Again. Nothing. One more time. Not a sound. Yui supposes that, like with Kanato, she’s not going to have much of a choice. Hesitantly, fearfully, she reaches for the handle of the door. 

But just before her hand can close around it, the door opens from the inside. Laito stands on the other side, looking worse than Yui’s ever seen him. He’s clean enough, presentable enough, but it’s his face that scares Yui most of all. His expression is more tense, more subdued than Yui has ever seen from him. His eyes look absolutely haunted. When she looks closely, Yui thinks that she can see his hands shaking by his sides. 

“L-Laito...” she says, trailing off a bit out of sheer nerves. Laito looks at her with empty green eyes, not a trace of amusement to be found. 

“Ah, Yui,” he starts, and Yui already can tell that this is  _ horrible.  _ “What are you doing here...? Is there something you needed from me?” Laito’s voice is relatively stable, but it’s his tone that makes Yui’s chest go tight. 

He sounds hollow. He sounds downright dead inside, some unplaceable sadness in his tone that Yui thinks could be the worst thing she’s ever heard. Every trace of playfulness, of Laito’s former easygoing self appears to be gone. He’s not smiling. He called her ‘Yui’, not ‘Bitch-chan’. Somehow, the lack of the demeaning nickname is worse now than if he’d said it. 

“Yes, um, I did. Y-You haven’t been out in a while. I wanted to tell you than Reiji’s been making food for you... and... a-and that I’d like you to come out for a bit if you can...? It’s not healthy to stay cooped up like this.” Yui more or less spits the words out, afraid of what the reaction is going to be. Normally, Laito would find something to make fun of. He’d find some way to turn her words against her for his own amusement. 

This time, Laito just looks at Yui blankly. He takes in a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and makes a face like he’d really rather just close the door and go back to bed. Or at least, Yui assumes that’s what he was doing. 

“Sorry, Yui. I don’t want to leave for a while. I’m tired. I’ll be staying here until I feel better, okay? Your usual Laito will be back to normal in no time. No worries.” Laito forces a smile at that, but it’s so empty Yui feels a chill run through her. This is horrifying. Laito acting like this is somehow a thousand times worse than if he’d lashed out at her. 

“O-Okay. I can’t force you or anything... Just... please take care of yourself. I can bring you some food later if you’d like.” Yui feels sick to her stomach. Watching Laito like this  _ hurts.  _ He’s trying so hard to fake it, but he’s failing at every turn. 

Yui suddenly thinks that things might have been like this for a while. That maybe Laito has been faking for a lot longer than she’s known. 

Laito closes the door slowly, the latch shutting with a  _ click.  _ Yui thinks of the face he was making right before it closed, of just how empty his eyes were when he spoke to her, and knows that there really is nothing she can do. There’s nothing here she can fix. With a sigh that feels like it’s taking all of her hope with it, Yui forces herself to turn and walk away. 

. . . 

Subaru is a different story than the rest. In some ways, he seems to hold it together fairly well. Yui sees him from time to time, even if the occasions are rare. He doesn’t run from her, but doesn’t speak to her either. 

She sees Subaru in the hallways of the mansion, seemingly wandering around. She sees him eating food that Reiji’s left out, but he never does more than pick at it. Most often, she sees him from her window, out in the rose garden all by himself. It’s concerning in a way that the others aren’t, if only because he seems to be in decent shape from her distance. 

Just from what she sees of him, Yui wonders if Subaru really is alright. The rest are so damaged, so horribly, horribly damaged– she can’t imagine whatever happened to them would have spared Subaru. He doesn’t do anything particularly concerning, though, and weirdest of all, nothing shows up destroyed. Yui hasn’t heard the telltale  _ crash  _ of a wall being punched through since the boys got back to normal, and that’s almost stranger than anything else Subaru has done. She would have expected... more. 

So Yui decides that she has to at least try. Reaching out is all she can do at this point, even as fruitless as it’s starting to seem. 

Yui goes to the rose garden one night, at the time Subaru is usually there, moonlight casting strange shadows in her path. She wanders the rows of flowers for long enough that she starts to get nervous, that she begins to wonder if Subaru is even in his usual place among the blooms. 

And then– 

“What do you want?” 

It’s Subaru. Subaru, sitting curled up on the very edge of one of the paths, half-way in with the flowers themselves. His hair is falling in his face more than ever before, his clothes are torn, and his eyes look  _ sad.  _

Stepping closer, Yui purposefully ignores the tiny stab of terror that goes through them. She’s not here to think about what the boys have been through. She’s not here to dig into that mystery now, or ever. That kind of thing needs to find its grave sooner rather than later. All Yui is here to do is all she really  _ can  _ do; she’s where she is to try to help. 

“Ah...” Yui pauses, tries to find her words. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say. She misses him? She’s worried about his brother? She wishes everything would just go back to normal?

“Are you okay?” is what comes out.

Subaru looks at Yui for a long moment, an emotion somewhere between confusion and misery hanging over his features. Then, he glances down, dropping his gaze and refusing to meet her eyes. Somehow, he curls in more, some almost-imperceptible change that makes him look so small. 

“Give me your best answer to that,” Subaru retorts, glaring at the ground. “I’m fucked. We all are. There’s not going to be much in the means of okay ever again.” Wiggling a shoe, he stares viciously at the stones in the path. It’s childish. He’s behaving like a frightened child, and Yui has absolutely no idea what she’s supposed to do with that information. 

So Yui kneels down beside him. She drops herself to the ground, sitting back her rear just about a foot away. For a moment, Subaru’s head whips around. He looks at her like she’s gone crazy, but drops his gaze just as quickly. She supposes he doesn’t really care what she does at this point.

“I know. I’m sorry. I... I don’t know what happened to you all, but I’m so, so sorry it did.” This time, it’s like she knows exactly what to say. Subaru tenses, shivers, pointedly still staring at the ground. Yui doesn’t know if anyone’s told him that before. For all she knows, no one’s apologized for  _ anything  _ in whatever length of life Subaru’s had. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s been very kind to these boys. Now or ever. 

“After... After everything we did to you, you feel bad for us?” Subaru asks, sounding somewhere between shocked and desperate. “We  _ deserved  _ it. That–, what happened–, it’s exactly what we deserved.” Subaru swallows hard, shaking worse than ever. “I can’t tell you what happened there. I can’t  _ say  _ it. Just–!” 

Subaru’s voice breaks, then. He moves to slam a fist down, to break whatever’s near enough to him to be broken. His fist slows to a stop in the middle of its arc, not quite making it to the ground. Subaru grits his teeth, tenses all over, and hunches his shoulders in like he’s so, so afraid. 

“Damn it! I hate this! Every time I close my eyes, I see all of  _ that!  _ Fuck... why do I even care what happens to them...?” Subaru yells, voice cracking half-way through. He sounds dangerously close to tears. 

Yui swallows, wringing her hands in her lap. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but it sounds truly,  _ truly  _ horrible. How he’s holding all this inside, how  _ all  _ of them are, Yui will never know. Because she doesn’t know what else to do, she scoots over, pulling Subaru into a hug. It’s dangerous. She’s half-expecting to be punched or shoved or batted away. Instead, Subaru sags like his strings have been cut, leaning into her touch.

He sobs, once, sounding choked and up and broken off like he hasn’t cried in a very, very long time. “What are we going to  _ do?”  _ Subaru asks, like he could fall apart. Yui hugs him tighter. Yui hugs him like she could keep every broken piece of him in place if she just tried. 

“I don’t know. But I’ll do what I can to help.”


End file.
